The European Commission defends, in the redesign of the European electricity market, the promotion of fixed-term contracts to avoid peaks, the sharing of renewable energies such as rooftop solar and even the regulation of prices in crisis situations.
The measures are part of the proposal to reform the design of the electricity market of the European Union (EU) to promote renewable energies, better protect consumers and increase industrial competitiveness, released today by the community executive, in which The European institution defends, as the Lusa had already advanced, “a wide offer of contracts” so that European clients “have the option of setting safe prices in the long term, in order to avoid excessive risks and volatility.”
In the proposal, the European Commission also supports the option of “dynamic price contracts to take advantage of price variability to use electricity when it is cheapest”, for example, to charge electric cars or use heat pumps, demanding that ” suppliers manage their price risks at least up to the limits of the volumes provided for in the fixed contracts, in order to [os consumidores] will be less exposed to market spikes and volatility,” according to the press release.
In order to protect the most vulnerable consumers (families or smaller companies), Brussels suggests that Member States act on retail prices in crisis situations to prevent those with overdue bills from running out of electricity, asking that countries that They do not have providers of last resort.
The idea is, according to the proposal, that when a crisis situation is declared in the EU, the intervention of the Member States is foreseen to “extend regulated retail prices to households and small and medium-sized companies”, during a determined period and without distorting the market, as happened in the current energy crisis.
Another measure to protect consumers is the possibility of sharing renewable energy, at a time when standards at the European level “are also being reformulated.”
“Consumers will be able to invest in wind or solar farms and sell excess solar electricity to neighbors and not just their provider and, for example, tenants will be able to share excess rooftop solar energy with a neighbor,” the bill proposes. European Comission .
In addition, to improve the flexibility of the energy system, Member States are expected to create support measures to increase storage.
The proposal also mentions consumption reduction targets in the EU to reduce pressure on prices, and Brussels points out that, “based on the experience gained during the “energy crisis”, the reform extends “the set of measures to reduce the gas consumption in the energy sector”. sector”.
“The more we support the development of renewable energy sources […]the less our electrical systems will depend on the production of fossil fuels and the lower the prices of electricity will be, ”says the European Commission in the proposal.
In Portugal, the current energy saving plan provides for a 15% reduction in energy consumption, as stipulated for the entire EU, although with exceptions given the national situation that lower the mandatory reduction to 7%.
In recent months, electricity prices have risen sharply in the EU, which has led to criticism of its formulation, conditioned by gas prices, a situation that the European Commission wants to reverse.
In the current configuration of the European market, gas determines the overall price of electricity when it is used, since all producers receive the same price for the same product — electricity — when it enters the grid.
In the EU there has been a consensus that this current model of marginal prices is the most efficient, but the acute energy crisis, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, has motivated discussion, given Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
Source: TSF
