What goes on in Poland on the 19th of March.
The prosecutor’s office will examine the concentration on the energy market
President of the Energy Regulatory Office is leaving his position in June this year. For a goodbye he directed a critical commentary on the energy market in Poland to the participants of the Energy Economy Forum under the patronage of BiznesAlert.pl. He informed that the prosecutor’s office will concentrate on the energy market in Poland.
– Welcome to one of my last conferences. I decided to come and say goodbye to you – said the president of the Energy Regulatory Office, Maciej Bando. He recognized the topic of the panel in which he took part for the unfortunate. It was about the capacity market, that is the mechanism of support for production capacities in the country, for which the decision of the European Commission has been questioned by Tempus Energy at the European Court of Justice. The ECJ has in the past relied on Tempus Energy’s complaint against the decision on the British capacity market.
– The capacity market project in Poland is needed in order to generate incentives for investors, it was to be an opportunity for investments in production sources to be returned. There were suggestions that if the energy already costs as much as PLN 300 / MWh, the capacity market is not needed. Yes and no – convinced the guest of the conference in Krakow. – There were cases on the energy market that prompted ERO to conduct research. After a few months we have the impression that it is possible to manipulate prices. We notified the prosecutor’s office who a few days ago announced that the case was accepted – revealed Bando.
– We estimated the real price at 240 PLN / MWh (the original obligation), and everything that happens to it then is putting off the margin. If we recall the assumptions of the capacity market, the numbers resulting from the Regulatory Impact Assessment were falling. We have a 20% increase in the budget over what was planned. The price could have been estimated with much greater accuracy – said Bando.
The results of the auction show that the goal has not been achieved. New projects have practically never appeared, but these giants have again appeared. The data from Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne show that the auctions were held by one entity. You can ask yourself whether I was wrong in using the word played: played in the name of the principles of mathematics, there is one entity, and then a long, long time – continued Maciej Bando. – What is the capacity market for, if only one entity is taking part? We’ve benn working for 20 years to create a market. In fact, it seems that this part of the market construction will be unnecessary. The activity of the office, which has a great tradition, is marginalized.
Asked whether it was possible to prevent the domination of one electricity company, Maciej Bando did not want to give a definite answer. It is necessary to start with the fact that the Ministry of Energy works for energy groups. That’s how it builds the law to make it good for companies. We have 70 percent concentration in production, so it was 30 years ago – the President was alarming.