The Government of North Macedonia adopted the decision to allocate additional funds in the amount of 47 million euros to state-owned power utility ESM to mitigate the effects of the energy crisis which had disastrous consequences on the country’s electricity supply.
ESM will use these funds to finance emergency electricity imports. The Government also instructed ESM to conclude an annex to the
agreement with universal electricity supplier EVN Home, according to which it will be able to defer the invoices for December and January until July 2022.
In early November 2021, the Government declared a 30-days state of emergency in the energy sector. In addition to extremely high prices
of electricity on exchanges, North Macedonia has serious problem with electricity supply due to frequent unavailability of its primary source of electricity – coal-fired thermal power plant Bitola, as well as low water levels at accumulations.
Therefore, in order to cover domestic demand, state-owned power utility ESM was forced to buy electricity through tender as prices ranging from 250 to 300 euros/MWh. One of the measures proposed by the Government is resuming production at oil-fired TPP Oslomej, which has been in cold reserve for some 12 years.
The state of emergency was later extended until June 2022.
