The country’s energy-intensive industrial sector is demanding two-year electricity tariff agreements, until the end of 2020, with the main power utility PPC, for greater clarity and stability concerning energy costs to be faced next year.

Shorter-term energy cost planning threatens the sustainability of enterprises in certain sub-sectors, industrialists have warned, adding that energy-cost support for the industrial sector, playing a vital role in Greece’s economic recovery effort, is essential.

Local industrial enterprises, appearing united and adamant, are refusing to sign PPC electricity tariff agreements limited to 2018 and insist on two-year deals.

Separate CO2 emission right cost payments, as is the arrangement at present, would be accepted, industrial sector officials have indicated.

An existing demand response mechanism (interruptability) – compensating major-scale consumers, such as industrial enterprises, when the TSO (IPTO) asks them to shift their energy usage (lower or stop consumption) during high-demand peak hours, so as to balance the electricity system needs – expires in 2019 but the new market conditions to be shaped by a succeeding permanent CAT mechanism remain unclear.

EVIKEN, the Association of Industrial Energy Consumers, has urged energy minister Giorgos Stathakis to seek European Commission approval for a continuation of the demand response mechanism in tandem with the permanent CAT mechanism.