The EU is contemplating measures to chop electrical energy demand as a part of its efforts to sort out skyrocketing power costs, a senior European Fee official mentioned on Thursday (1 September).
Till now, efforts have primarily targeted on lowering fuel consumption amid issues that Russia might additional curb fuel flows to the area or lower off provides fully.
However the European Fee is now additionally inspecting an electrical energy demand-reduction plan to take care of hovering power costs.
The fee is wanting into all totally different types of power value caps, however “there may be additionally one thing on demand discount for electrical energy,” mentioned Mechthild Woersdoerfer, deputy director of the fee’s power division, instructed MEPs on the power committee.
The EU government can also be assessing the chances of intervening within the electrical energy market and taxing firms for his or her windfall earnings from excessive fuel costs, she additionally mentioned.
Her feedback got here after fee president Ursula von der Leyen introduced earlier this week that the EU government is getting ready a new “emergency measures” bundle, acknowledging that present costs reveal “the constraints” of the EU’s power market design.
The brand new proposal, nevertheless, is not going to be finalised in time for the subsequent extraordinary assembly of power ministers scheduled for subsequent week, Woersdoerfer mentioned.
“There may be not a lot we are able to put together for that [meeting] besides some factual replace,” she instructed EU lawmakers.
Pure fuel costs are already nearly 12 instances increased than initially of 2021, whereas the value of electrical energy in international locations corresponding to Spain hit a brand new document this August.
Beneath the prevailing market guidelines, fuel units the general electrical energy value, however a number of member states, together with Spain, France and Greece, have known as for decoupling electrical energy costs from the fuel market.
The Czech Republic, which holds the EU council presidency, has voiced help for an EU-wide fuel value cap — a proposal backed by Italy and Belgium.
In the meantime, others have been calling for capping fuel costs — an concept that has just lately gained the help of initially opposed Austria and Germany.
Hungary buys extra fuel
EU leaders have pledged to cut back their dependency on Russian fossil fuels as shortly as doable in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Through the summer season, member states agreed to voluntarily lower fuel use by 15 p.c till March — a goal that would nonetheless grow to be binding in an emergency. And nationwide authorities should inform the fee of the progress made to fulfill this goal in mid-October, and each two months afterwards.
Nonetheless, Hungary signed this week a new take care of Gazprom to purchase additional pure fuel on high of its present provides — which appears at odds with its gas-saving commitments and normal pledges.
“We’d be very to see how the Hungarian authorities current the info [on the gas-saving target] to us on that date [15 October],” a fee spokesperson instructed reporters on Thursday.
