Wednesday 29 October 2014
ACER: electricity and natural gas market in 2013
ACER ( Agency for Cooperation of
Energy Regulators) has issued “Annual Report on the Results of Monitoring the Internal Electricity
and Natural Gas Markets in 2013”, publication definitely worth reading by those
interested in European electricity and gas market. Report points out many
interesting highlights about Polish markets as well.
Full version of the report is available after clicking
following link: Report
The report is divided into sections
covered by the subject of interest ( not countries ), including:
General information on retail
electricity and gas markets, wholesale electricity/gas markets and network
access and Consumer protection and empowerment. It is rich source of
information which, after detailed reading, gives very accurate overview of the
European power market.
One of the most interesting elements
of report is comparison of electricity price in different member states. In
many countries, there has been a discussion regarding market coupling (
bordering countries shall have the same price of electricity, to encourage
import/export of this commodity), which in fact, could help balancing
electricity price difference – which are very big across Europe. According to
the report, the highest POTP (post-tax total price) of electricity has Denmark
(29,60 c€/kWh), the lowest – Bulgaria ( 9,03 c€/kWh). It is due to the taxation
( often including the coverage for feed-in tariffs for RES). The highest price
for PTP ( pre-tax price) has Cyprus with 21,52 c€/kWh.
The only country which noted the
decrease of electricity price, since 2009, is Hungary where the government has
intervened to lower the prices for households. On the other side, country which
noted electricity prices growing at the fastest pace ( from 2009 onwards) is
Estonia.
Information which might cause a bit of
a worry relates to the level of Poland’s market liberalization. It is known
that market liberalization not only creates competitive environment, causing
prices to fall, but also boosts innovations. From the picture painted in the
report, Poland seems to be price-stable country, with traditional approach to
energy generation.
The main obstacle, pointed in the
report, is the lack or difficulty with access to the market information for the
customers (p.81 of the report) causing number of potential problems. According
to the conducted research, it seems that many Poles are not aware that they can
change electricity provider. If they decided to do so, the procedure of
termination already existing contract is lengthy (therefore many customers
resign from the change).
The report also points out two main
difficulties that new entrants of the market will most likely face. First of
all, the information and the authorization procedure is pursued in national
language: Polish. In most of the cases, legal documents and reports ( prior to
obtaining authorization ) have to be translated by certified national
translator. Secondly, the procedures are time-consuming, take approx. 1 year and the level of attention to detail in
reporting is very high in comparison to other European states.
I encourage you to take a look at the
published report, to have general overview of the European power market.
*ACER:
Agency for Cooperation of Energy Regulators; its overall mission as stated in its founding regulation is
to complement and coordinate the work of national energy regulators at EU level
and work towards the completion of the single EU energy market for electricity and
natural gas.
Official website: http://www.acer.europa.eu/Pages/ACER.aspx
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