On Thursday 19 January, the European Commission authorised €100 million in Austrian aid to reduce peak electricity consumption in Austria in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
This is the first measure to support the reduction of electricity consumption that the Commission has authorised under the state aid temporary crisis framework adopted in 2022 and amended on 20 July and 28 October 2022.
The aid will be allocated through a competitive bidding process, which will be open to all means of further reducing consumption, such as shifting consumption to off-peak hours and electricity storage.
Projects will be selected based on the lowest unit cost of additional consumption reduction. The measure features safeguards to avoid overcompensation of beneficiaries. These include: - the requirement for the beneficiaries to forecast their electricity consumption before they know whether they will be required to reduce it; - a dynamic price cap for bids; - a requirement to ensure a minimum number of participants in each tender. In addition, safeguards will be in place to ensure competition between electricity consumers and aggregators and the proper functioning of the electricity market. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)