The year 2021 brought unprecedented records on the energy market, with prices more than 10 times higher than last year throughout Europe, Romania being one of the most affected countries. Since summer, prices have risen all over Europe.
The price of electricity exceeded 400 euros per MWh, reaching levels 10 times higher than last year, that of gas 130 euros per MWh, compared to 3-4 euros, and the carbon certificate reached 90 euros, from 22 euros at the beginning of the year, according to Agerpres.
“How complicated is the situation? Since 2007, when I have started working at ANRE, for almost 15 years, I have not seen the situation as complicated as it is now,” ANRE Vice President Zoltan Nagy-Bege said in mid-December.
“At the beginning of the year, I thought that the challenge for 2021 would be liberalization and that was the case in the first half, then prices started to rise in the market and in a few months we reached a general crisis, I don’t think anyone expected prices of 300 euros per MWh for energy throughout Europe (in the meantime they have reached 400 euros-e.n.) or 130 euros per MWh for natural gas. It is an evolution from the surprisingly low prices in 2020 of 3-4 euros for gas and 30-40 euros for electricity,” said the ANRE official.
In Romania, the Government came up with an emergency ordinance, later approved by the Parliament, by which the final price is capped for household consumers, and part of the bill is compensated from the state budget, while non-household consumers do not pay network tariffs and other components of the invoice.
The reduction will be applied directly to the bill, and the energy suppliers will later recover their money from the state. But suppliers fear that the state will not pay their money on time to offset the bills, which will create liquidity problems throughout the market and lead to the disappearance of some companies.
“We are very worried that we will not get our money back. There are so many loopholes in the legislation to postpone the approval of payments. In our opinion, the common Order on implementing rules should be amended. If we receive the money after six months… it may not be the same competition in the market,” said Laurenţiu Urluescu, president of the Association of Energy Suppliers (AFEER).
According to him, every week we see a bankruptcy of an energy company, and ANRE data confirms this. More than 10 gas suppliers have left the market so far, due to high prices, about 70,000 consumers have been taken over by suppliers of last resort and there is a risk that other companies will end up in this situation, says Zoltan Nagy-Bege.
Instead, the relevant minister, Virgil Popescu, assured the representatives of the industry several times that they will receive their money on time, meaning within 30 days from the issuance of the invoices. In fact, in the state budget for 2022 are provided 1.2 billion lei budget credits to compensate the bill of household consumers (at the Ministry of Labor), as well as 2.1 billion lei budget credits and 4 billion lei commitment credits for consumers non-households (at the Ministry of Energy).