The new RES fee will come into effect as of 1 January 2021 and will amount to 0.0037 euros/kWh, which is more than four times higher compared to the previous figure as Serbian Government adopted a decision of the increase of fees for encouraging electricity production from renewable sources, paid by end consumers through their electricity bills.
The increased RES fee will help state-owned power utility EPS to stabilize its financial situation, since it is obliged to purchase electricity produced by privileged RES producers at preferential prices. According to consultant Bogdan Petrovic, in order to recover EPS’s finances, it would be necessary to increase RES fees, through which electricity production from renewable energy sources is financed. Either the RES fee will be increase or the losses will have to be solved with state subsidies. The fee has not been increased so far, and new wind farms, which were approved several years ago, have recently been put into operation. The RES fee has not changed since 2015, while the supply of electricity from privileged producers has increased eight times in that period. Last year, over 105 million euros were paid for the purchase of electricity from privileged producers, while EPS charges 0.074 euros/kWh of electricity sold to end users through feed-in tariffs. Petrovic estimated that EPS will make losses of 120 to 150 million euros annually only due to insufficient revenues from RES fees.
