Nikos Mantzaris was invited to “Euranet” radio show of SKAI 100.3 by journalists Nikos Andritsos and Korina Georgiou, on Sunday 19 January 2025. He talked about Greece’s contradictory gas policy, at a time when energy prices in the domestic wholesale market have increased precisely because of the use of gas.
Asked to comment on Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ new letter to Ursula von der Leyen on the energy market, Nikos Mantzaris raised two issued. First, he commented on the Greek Prime Minister’s point that the large differences in electricity prices in the EU are due to limited cross-border flows.
Indeed, Μantzaris said, this is part of the problem. However, the real issue is the way the European energy market works. Because of the European regulation that does not allow a cap on the wholesale market, there are only indirect solutions to deal with high prices. One of them, at the national level, is to further tax windfall profits of fossil fuel power producers, above the 10% introduced by the government in August 2024.
The second issue was the Prime Minister’s reference to the need for further investment in gas infrastructure. According to Nikos Mantzaris, this proposal contradicts both the NECP – which foresees a halving of gas use in electricity generation in 2030 compared to 2024 – and RePowerEU.
“Since the government recognizes that the problem [with energy prices] is caused by distortions in the gas market, how is this consistent with asking for new gas infrastructure?” he wondered.
At this point, he cited data from The Green Tank’s latest Gaswatch analysis for 2024, which shows that Greece is only one of three countries that increased final gas consumption compared to 2023 – and by far the worst performer against the voluntary -15% reduction target.
Finally, the Green Tank’s report on the decarbonization of the Greek industry was briefly mentioned in the same interview.
You can listen to it in Greek here.