“If we consider that energy suppliers, providers, do not pass this lower energy to consumers, we will intervene,” Deputy Minister of Energy, Nikos Tsafos, speaking today (1.9.2025) to ERTnews, regarding the invoices of power expected to announce electricity providers within the day.
On the occasion of the message the prime minister sent to the companies that they should pass the wholesale reductions in the retail, otherwise there will be government intervention, Mr Tsafos said “what we saw and what the prime minister mentioned is that we had a very good summer. To give some elements, last summer when there was a mini energy crisis, the average wholesale was 122 euros, I mean June, July and August. (…) We had a fairly large decrease in summer electricity prices, with, especially in August, the wholesale of 73 euros had fallen and what the prime minister said is that we are expecting suppliers a very large reduction, especially the fact that we have not been passed by the summer and the summer we have not passed. And we hope we will see it when providers announce the invoices. “
Asked by the Deputy Minister if the rate of price reduction can be up to 30%, that is to say, a decrease in the price he mentioned earlier, he clarified that “30%is the comparison of last summer, that is, three months with three months of this summer. So it is not that this percentage decrease will also be found in retail. And I recall that wholesale is the starting point for retail. Then there are other costs that are added, leading to the price of retail. “
“What we are saying is that the suppliers were scared for the summer. This bad summer was not verified. We had a very good summer. August was particularly good and this fact and this very low price of August we are waiting to see it reflected in the invoices that providers will be out of September, ”he added.
The reason the price was low was a great deal of the RES we have in the country, the Deputy Minister noted.
As to the criticism that although the country has good performance in RES production, this reality is not reflected in the account, Mr Tsafos explained that “what is happening in general not only in our country, there is a curve everywhere in the day, but the price of electricity is defined every hour. So, at noon that has a lot of sun the price is quite low, it often reaches zero, sometimes it is negative. When the sun falls, however, and the whole world turns around and starts cooking, lights up, the price goes up.
So the truth is that one can see an instant price at noon and say it is very cheap, this is a fictional picture because it does not respond to the 24 hours or all month. What we see is whether the average price is up and down and going up and down and these ups and downs are transformed into the retail price and that is what we expect to see in September. ”
Concerning the interventions mentioned by the prime minister, unless the reduced price of wholesale is not revealed at the retail price, Mr Tsafos was asked what may now be decided, if necessary, he said:
“In the past – and when we say about the past, we mean 2021 – when prices have gone up, we had made a number of interventions. Some interventions were in wholesale, some interventions in the retail, some interventions were trying to correct surpluses, some interventions were in favor of consumers, that is, to subsidize consumer invoices.
What we are saying is that at the moment in wholesale it seems that there is a decline that is very important, so we do not consider wholesale is something that needs intervention. What we need to see is to carry this wholesale to retail. We have tools, we have used them in the past, where we have taxed a surplus and have made room for retail. We have mechanisms from the past we can use, but all of this will depend on the percentage we see the invoices decrease in September. “
Describing the general picture, the Deputy Minister of Energy said that in our country we always look at two prices, wholesale and the retail that the consumer pays. If we look at both values, he noted, what has happened is that there is a accumulated accuracy that comes mainly from natural gas, which remains expensive and is the energetic crisis of 2022 and this expensive gas is transported to wholesale and in turn wholesale.
“But make two comments in general. First, if you see the retail in our country it is about the European average. Obviously because of the economic crisis we have had, this is not good, we would like to be lower than the European average, but we are on the European average.
Also, the accumulated accuracy in our country is also about the European average. Some months we have been more, some months we have been lower. What does this tell us? That what is happening in Greece is not a Greek phenomenon is a European phenomenon. “