Energy deputy: ‘OTE should serve as an example for PPC’

The electricity market’s liberalization will help the power utility PPC restructure, as was the case with the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization OTE, the newly elected centre-right New Democracy government’s deputy energy minister Gerassimos Thomas supports.

The official, backed by experience as a deputy at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy, has not specified what action should be taken if PPC’s current bailout-required disinvestment of lignite units fails to deliver.

But he is in favor of a national policy for the energy system’s decarbonization that would take initiatives and move a step ahead of bailout requirements rather than simply observe them.

It remains to be seen if further measures – beyond PPC’s lignite units disinvestment and the NOME auctions – will be needed for the electricity market’s liberalization, Thomas had commented late last year, adding, at the time, that the country has spent the last 8 years relying on the bailout program as its guide. Irrespective of this, the country needs to look at where it is heading and take initiatives as the market is changing completely, he added.

Thomas is a firm supporter of renewable energy and is expected to give priority to this sector.

On the NOME auctions, the official believes that their failure, so far, to break PPC’s market dominance must first be analyzed before any further action is taken.