Croatia: GEN-I and RWE, Electricity will of course become more expensive because of RES fees

Published on 28. October 2013., SEE Energy News

Increasing fees for promoting electricity production from renewable energy sources and cogeneration will be felt solely by citizens. Although the economy minister Ivan Vrdoljak hoped that electricity suppliers will take on that cost and will not increase electricity bills, his ideas have not been forthcoming – electricity bills will be increased for citizens by 10 kunas per month.

“The company GEN-I did not participate nor was aware of the government’s preparation of the fee increase for RES. Regular part of the bill has been increased with this government’s decision, in which, as electricity suppliers, we have no agency nor can we accept responsibility for this increase. According to law, company GEN-I must charge consumers a ‘compensation’ in the exact amount that the Government predicted. Estimated approximately amount increase for the average electricity consumption household is about 10.94 kunas per month or 6 percent increase in the price for the supply and production and 3.5 percent increase for total energy costs.

GEN-I takes responsibility for price levels and for the amounts of electrical energy. We would like to emphasize that our prices, regardless of the government’s decision, have no rise and remain the best in the market. Specifically, our tariffs for households remain 10 percent below the HEP tariffs for small businesses up to 30 percent. With this in mind, the cost of our customers will still continue to be lower than the cost of users who are supplied by HEP.

“Let us add that the company GEN-I is willing for collaboration, so as a participant in the market supply of electricity, we would like to participate in discussions related to the subject matters of extremely high importance for all parties involved, and above all – the consumers”, GEN-I corresponds to the request of Index for comment on fee increase and assess how this will affect the amount of bills that citizens pay for electricity each month.

The fee will pay the citizens, not suppliers, RWE also confirmed:

“At the session, the Government adopted the National action plan for renewable energy sources by 2020, which provides that the share of energy from renewable sources increases to 20 percent. Upon the Decision of the Government, compensation for renewable sources increases from half-lipa per consumed kilowatt hour to 3.5 lipa without VAT, starting from 1 November. This basically means that only item for promotion of renewable sources on electricity bills will increase. Every consumer has been paying for the fee for renewable sources, and that item will increase with all suppliers. However, the item relating to the electricity consumed which the customer pays to RWE Energy is not changed.

The government did not send an official announcement that it will increase the amount of the fee, but the decision was expected, considering that Croatia wants to increase the share of energy from renewable sources to 20 percent by 2020.

The fee for renewable sources of energy, according to the law, every consumer has to pay, and RWE Energy can not affect the government’s decision to increase the fees. This fee is to be paid to producers of electricity from renewable sources, not to RWE Energy.”

Source; Serbia Energy See desk