Eurostat recently compared electricity prices for households in the European Union in relation to purchasing power. The Czech Republic came out as the most expensive. Is the statistic adequate?
I think it is relevant. Electricity in the Czech Republic is expensive due to purchasing power. In terms of price comparison for businesses, we are not doing very well either. And not at all when compared to non-European competition.
The likely future Minister of Industry, Karel Havlíček from ANO, declares that starting in January, he will shift payments for renewable resources from households and companies to the state, which will make electricity cheaper by up to a tenth. Will we reach the European average?
Transferring payments for renewable resources can be done relatively easily and amounts to 500 crowns per megawatt hour without VAT. This should mean a discount for households by seven to eight percent, and it could put us in calmer waters in the ranking of countries.
It will burden the state budget, but it is a bet on faster economic growth, because households will have more money to spend. Businesses will be more competitive, so in theory it should bring in more money than it costs.
When the state takes over the payments for renewable resources, it burdens the state budget, but it is a bet for faster economic growth
Distributors say that they have to increase their investments by billions annually mainly because of photovoltaic energy. Is that so?
Photovoltaics play a big role in this. It is a separate item at distributors, which has really grown a lot. At the same time, it is also about the restoration of networks. The extensive July outage showed that we are not doing well.
The problem was caused more by dispatcher-type errors and possibly an outdated network model. They work differently today than before – it is no longer the case that electricity flows so-called downhill from large sources to customers. With regard to renewable resources, it is considerably more complicated.
Is the outage likely to recur?
I don’t want to scare you, but we got into quite a lot of trouble. According to experts, not one but four things went wrong at once. In a situation that was not dramatic in any way, without extreme meteorological phenomena or extraordinary situations from abroad.
I can imagine a more complicated situation. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that something like this will happen again. At the same time, I believe that operators of the transmission network and distribution systems have learned their lesson. We need to name the mistakes and tell ourselves what we will do to prevent them from happening again.
Representatives of the parties of the future government claim that the emission allowances for households agreed upon by the EU countries will not be introduced. How do you rate it?
I think that is the reverberation of the election campaign. I’m not saying that those parties don’t want to do it. In the end, most likely, only a letter will go to Brussels that we don’t like it. I do not think that we will escalate it to a situation where we would violate EU law and expose ourselves to the risk of drawing European money.
As soon as there is a new government, the prevailing view is that it is a burden, but at the same time the money is coming back here. It’s more a matter of separating them well. Havlíček promises to put them in the nets. That’s a good idea. It is more difficult to make it effective. So that prices for consumers are reduced and money does not stay in the supplier cartel. It’s not easy.
Jan Palaščák
He studied economics at Charles University, worked at ČSOB and in the financial markets.
He founded his own energy group Amper Holding.
It focuses on modern energy, decentralization, renewable sources and digitization of energy systems.
If allowances are introduced, what should the revenues be used for?
It will be about getting the money to those who will be affected by the measure without complicated bureaucracy. It will not happen at all to the richer people who, for example, used the Green Savings subsidy, reduced their energy consumption and have an electric car.
I am exaggerating when I say that if the Motorists have a Ministry of the Environment, they will not go into direct conflict with Brussels. They could come up with a so-called motovoucher. The increased travel costs would be returned to people who cannot live without a car, and on whom the impact will be large. I think something like that will happen.
Households will pay up to tens of thousands of crowns more per year for energy because of the allowances, experts warn. The Ministry of the Environment, on the other hand, has a study that it will be less. How do you think it will be?
The study is optimistic, it calculates a price of 45 euros per permit. But it is necessary to consider different price levels, with inflation it can be 60 euros. If the permit would rise to 100 to 200 euros, then we are completely different.
In any case, the impacts will be uneven. Anyone who drives a diesel or gasoline vehicle, and even heats with coal, will feel the impact extremely. For some households, even with the current exchange price of the permit of 65 euros, the impact will be considerable, lower by tens of thousands per year.
