Nikos Mantzaris comments on the financial loss for Greek lignite regions under the Joint Ministerial Decision (October 19, 2022) which provides for a new allocation of the revenues earned from the auctioning of allowances in the EU ETS.
Under the new allocation, the revenue percentage for the lignite regions is reduced to 1,125%, while the percentage that will support the Energy Transition Fund is increased to 77.275%. This is the third Joint Ministerial Decision issued regarding the 2022 auctioning revenue allocation, leading to a reduction in revenues for the lignite regions.
Commenting on this development, Nikos Mantzaris notes that “if the public revenues from the auctioning of allowances in the EU ETS are taken into account and a realistic prediction is made for the evolution of carbon prices by the end of the year (75 euros/tonne), the total revenues of the country for 2022 from ETS will exceed 1.3 billion euros. Therefore, the reduction of the share of the lignite regions from 4.5% to 1.125% amounts to about 44 million euros, which will support the Energy Transition Fund, where more than 5 billion euros have already been collected since the beginning of the crisis. […] It seems that in Greece the aid to lignite regions from the revenues of the auctioning of emission allowances – which Greece was the first EU Member State to use for Just Transition purposes – is falling victim to the energy crisis.
The article was published on October 24, 2022 and it is available at xronos-kozanis.gr.
