BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 21. The European Commission strongly supports good practices, such as national, regional or joint auctions or tender systems to incentivise reduction in consumption from industrial consumers by letting industries offer gas consumption reduction, Trend reports with reference to the Commission.
This would result in a reduction in current aggregate gas consumption, making more gas available for e.g. storage filling. These auctions or tenders could be organised at cross-border level in order to maximise the possibilities of demand reduction notably by large cross-border customers who operate in multiple Member States.
In this respect, as also set out in the Temporary Crisis Framework for State Aid, EU State aid rules enable Member States, to incentivise voluntary reductions in gas demand, subject to certain conditions, such as by incentivising switching towards cleaner energy sources. The Commission will rapidly explore the idea of EU auctions in close consultation with Member States.
“Other similar market-based measures already foreseen in the national emergency plans include so called ‘interruptible contracts’, i.e. a flexibility measure where pre-determined financial compensation is granted, for a pre-determined level of gas volume reduction for the period of disconnection. In an emergency situation, after all market and non-market-based measures have been exhausted, Member States may need to start curtailing partially or fully specific consumer groups that they have identified in a pre-defined order in their emergency plans. Approaches to such prioritization differ among Member States and may or may not consider a wider impact on critical segments of the EU or global economy. In case of uncoordinated decisions, there is an important risk of fragmentation of the Single Market, with un-intended impact of national decisions on other EU countries as we have witnessed during the Covid crisis,” says the European Commission.