The basic subsidy for domestic electricity consumption will remain the same as last month at €40 per megawatt/hour, the minister for the Environment and Energy Kostas Skrekas announced at a press conference on Tuesday 28th February. At the same time the prices announced by most suppliers have dropped slightly so that consumers’ electricity bills will also be slightly reduced. In detail, the subsidies for March will be as follows:

Domestic consumers

For monthly consumption of up to 500 kWh – a category which includes 90 per cent of households – the subsidy will be €40 per MWh. Households with monthly consumption over 500 kWh will receive the same amount on the condition that they have reduced their consumption by 15 per cent compared with the same period last year.

Households enrolled in the Social Residential Tariff will receive a subsidy of €84 per MWh. For farmers, the subsidy will be €40 per MWh

Industrial consumers

For energy-intensive industries (including steel mills, cement and aluminium works, potteries, textile producers, paper- and glass-makers, etc) the minister noted that a support scheme is being planned on the basis of the EU’s Community Framework. It will include businesses which have not entered fixed price contracts of over 12 months, will not be signing bilateral physical delivery contracts with electrical energy suppliers, and are faced with a 40 per cent reduction in operating margins as a result of the increase in the cost of electricity. For these cases, there will be a subsidy of €50 per MWh for the whole of 2023.

Examples of benefits

The Energy minister quoted several examples of the benefits to domestic consumers, comparing the costs on a typical bill before and after the subsidy and with the addition of the economy bonus:

– For a consumption of 400 kWh, a householder in March would pay €78.00 without the subsidy, but €62.00 with it.

– For a consumption of 700 kWh the cost would be €136.50 without the subsidy but €116.50 with it, falling to €108.50 with the additional economy bonus.

– For a consumption of 1,200 kWh, the cost would be €234.00 without the subsidy, €214.00 with the subsidy and €186.00 with the additional economy bonus.

The unit price on which these figures are based works out at €0.195 per kWh. It should be remembered that households consuming over 500 kWh per month still receive the subsidy on the first 500 kWh. Thus someone consuming 700 kWh will pay a total of €136.50 without subsidy, less €20.00 subsidy for the first 500 kWh, or less €28.00 subsidy for the whole 700 kWh if they qualify for the economy bonus.
(Haniotika Nea, 01/02/23)