The Employers and Industrialists Federation (OEB) has been consistently and persistently stressing for a number of years that the high cost of electricity hinders the country’s development, affects the competitiveness of businesses and shrinks the standard of living of the population.
As it is known, the OEB family includes all the major Organizations and Associations of energy production companies, both with conventional means and with renewable sources. At the same time, the vast majority of Cypriot companies are also members of OEB, which are consumers of electricity and some of them are large consumers, such as hotels, cement plants, desalination, chemical industries, plastics industries, etc.
Consequently, OEB has the advantage of knowing the data on both sides of the equation: both electricity producers and consumers. And it makes unlimited efforts to design and implement solutions that will relieve the business community, to which it is accountable, from the cost of electricity.
However, we recognize that no intervention alone is capable of producing the solution to the problem with immediate or even short-term implementation.
Regardless of the causes created by today’s data, regardless of responsibilities for long-standing acts and omissions of the State, the easing of the problem of the high cost of electricity in Cyprus requires a series of actions.
These actions include the efficient functioning of the competitive electricity market, the reduction of RES production cuts, the introduction of energy storage systems, the modernization of electricity transmission and distribution networks, and the advent of natural gas, to name just a few.
No action alone, not even the country’s electrical interconnection with Greece and Israel, is capable of delivering spectacular reductions in the cost of electricity. On the contrary, it must be understood that the investments required for the implementation of the necessary infrastructure will have to be amortized, which in the short term will put additional pressure on electricity prices.
On July 15, OEB held a high-level Workshop on the reduction of electricity costs. In addition to the leadership of OEB, the Minister of Energy and all the bodies that have a role in the matter participated in it. The findings of the Workshop will be discussed in a few days between OEB and CERA and then with the President of the Republic himself.
Oversimplifying a complex issue with well-sounding but unsubstantiated claims, targeting one or more participants in electricity production and cultivating in the population the belief that simple and quick moves will reduce the cost of electricity, are not only misleading – they are also dangerous.
