The Price Limit Act contains errors that will bring negative consequences for RES development. The regulation’s price regime covers long-term cPPAs, eliminating their key advantage and neglecting technological progress of the last decade. The changes have not been consulted with the industry, resulting in anxiety and threat for the RES sector.
Polish Wind Energy Association is anxiously monitoring the situation on the electricity market, where extreme prices constitute a major threat to further development of the Polish economy. PWEA appreciated the Government’s legislative initiative aimed at limiting electricity prices for final customers, including industry. However, the entire industry is full of anxiety, because the draft was not subject to public consultations, what prevented many industry organisations from presenting their remarks and recommendations. Therefore, the adopted Act does not take into account all circumstances that should have been considered by the project initiator, what may substantially jeopardize RES development in Poland.
In the context of the adopted regulatory changes, it is crucial for the extraordinary solutions that substantially interfere with the electricity market to be temporary. Their application should be limited to the deadline defined in the draft (30 June 2023) and comply with the EU law (Council Regulation (EU) 2022/1854 of 6 October 2022 on an emergency intervention to address high energy prices).
The adopted regulation should protect cPPA development rather than implement solutions eliminating long-term contracts. Due to their nature, cPPAs are an incentive to limit electricity prices in the long term, unlike the act, which provides for a time horizon until 30 June 2023 only. The current solution will adversely affect the cPPA market, because producers, considering the risk, will no longer be interested in concluding such contracts, preventing industrial customers from hedging electricity prices in the long term.
Moreover, the approach to determining the deduction for the Fund from daily resolution should be changed to a monthly cycle — the current approach may result in losses for power utilities. The Act in the currently adopted wording does not take into account technological changes that occurred within the last 10 years, pushing down electricity production costs from wind. PWEA suggests to limit the one fits all approach to determining price limit for particular technologies — projects implemented 8–10 years ago feature higher costs compared to projects completed in 2020–2021.
The industry’s and key stakeholders’ incapacity to present remarks and recommendations caused the Act, adopted in haste due to the urgent need for changes, to contain substantial errors and neglect a number of important issues that may prevent the assumed results from being achieved or result in excessively cost thereof.