The Polish Electricity Association appeals to the European Commission to intervene in the CO2 emission allowances market. For that purpose, it is necessary to immediately convene the EU Climate Change Committee. According to PKEE, Brussels has the right to take such an extraordinary action as the legal condition related to the level of allowance prices has already been fulfilled.
In view of the increase in allowance prices observed in recent months, pursuant to Article 29 emissions trading scheme, the European Commission has the tools to intervene in the market in the event of a sustained period of excessive price increases. This provision requires the Commission to convene a meeting of the Climate Change Committee and propose an immediate remedy. This obligation takes effect if, for more than six consecutive months, allowance prices are more than three times higher than the average price of allowances in the market over the previous two years. According to our estimates, this condition has already been met.
Consequently, in view of the unconditional wording of the legislation, we ask the Commission to convene a meeting of the Climate Change Committee, which should decide either to allow Member States to bring forward the sale of a proportion of the number of allowances to be auctioned or to allow Member States to sell up to 25 % allowances from the new entrants reserve.
PKEE hopes that the current situation on the emission allowance trading market will trigger an adequate response from the European Commission in order to prevent the risk of relocation of energy-intensive industry outside the EU and energy poverty in Europe. We are open to conducting a constructive dialogue in order to find an appropriate solution to mitigate the effects of the recently observed changes in the carbon emission allowance prices.
At the same time, we would like to stress that PKEE supports the policy of reducing CO2 emissions by the European Union, but we cannot allow too rapid price increases to maintain the competitiveness of the European economy and not to deplete the citizens' wealth.