Az oldalt gondozza: Energiaklub

Feed-in-Tariff

The aim of the compulsory feed-in tariff system created in 2003 was to support environment friendly, efficient energy sources and technologies, and to facilitate their spreading. It made it compulsory to purchase electricity produced from renewable energy sources and in small cogeneration power plants at a price higher than the current market tariff. The system is divided into two parts (KÁP, 2003-2007; KÁT, 2008-2011). According to the original laws shaping this system, it would have closed with 31 December 2010 for cogeneration producers, such energy producers would have been eligible for subsidies until then. The primary difference between the two periods lies in their respective calculation techniques, that is, the balance of electricity calculated this way and of money spent for such purposes. Energy produced in cogeneration was in majority (approx. 70%) in both. Over time, producers who were originally not meant to be eligible for subsidies also “lobbied themselves” into the system: larger power plants (e.g. the Budapest Power Plant), and fossil power plants (Vértesi, Mátrai) using part biomass, a renewable energy source.

The compulsory feed-in system has been increasingly supporting the Hungarian energy sector, where company interests (keeping money-losing power plants alive, a secure electricity purchasing market, calculable revenues, etc.) met with political interests (district heating prices kept low arbitrarily through the rising price of electricity). The end of the system stipulated for late 2010 brought on spectacular political lobbying, resulting in several, sometimes quite fast revisions of related laws in 2009 in order to prolong the system.

As the amounts paid to power plants are considered subsidies according to the Energiaklub, they should be publicly available for each power plant, especially in light of the obvious political sensitivity of the system. As the Hungarian Energy Office (MEH) prepares a report annually on the yearly status of the compulsory feed-in system, it classifies as a data controller. This has not been disputed by the Energy Office either.

The MEH, however, declined our related data request so we turned to the court. The Energy Office did not provide actual proof at the first trial (at the Metropolitan Court of Budapest on 13 May 2010) but submitted correspondence on the subject to date to the lawsuit documentation. The trial was therefore adjourned, and later – due to illness – the case was transferred to another committee.  At the trial on 14 December 2010, upon the clarifying questions of the presiding judge (on the exact data requested by the claimant), the legal representative of the Energy Office announced that the requested data are not at the Office’s disposal in the form and quantity requested because those are managed by the MAVIR Hungarian Transmission System Operator Company Ltd. As the Energiaklub had no means to prove this, the organisation abandoned the lawsuit.