LAGIE, the Electricity Market Operator, appears set to be tasked with collecting RES-supporting surcharges for direct payment into the RES special account, a task until now handled by IPTO, the power grid operator, through a complicated and less direct.

LAGIE, or, more specifically, the new LAGIE to emerge once the country’s energy exchange has been established, appears to be the likeliest successor of the revised surcharge collection system for direct payment into the RES special account.

LAGIE will charge and collect an ETMEAR surcharge directly from electricity suppliers, a surcharge imposed on thermal electricity producers, as well as a carbon tax imposed on the main power utility PPC, the country’s only producer possessing lignite sources.

For quite some time now, SPEF, the Hellenic Association of Photovoltaic Energy Producers, and the entire RES sector have called for a more direct system of payments into the RES special account.

The new LAGIE is also expected to continue auctioning CO2 emission rights.