Filenews 26 February 2023 - by Chrysanthos Manoli
The efforts of journalists and others for some reliable information about the intentions of the new President of the Republic for the person to whom he will entrust the Ministry of Energy did not bear fruit until yesterday.
Mr. Christodoulides said that he will probably avoid the publication of the new ministers over the weekend, so we will have more - anyway - in the next 48 hours.
What we learned from a reliable source is that the new President was informed in recent days about the personal attack launched by the EAC guilds on the president of CERA, but also the background around the letter they sent to Mr. Poulikkas, which they communicated to the media.
The letter from the guilds is of particular importance, because it records real problems in the electricity sector quite accurately in some places, although there are other, equally serious ones, which have not been mentioned.
On the other hand, the guilds took care to place on Mr. Poulikkas (and by extension on CERA) all the responsibility for the perpetuation and aggravation of the problems (and certainly CERA is not blameless), although they know very well that a significant share of responsibility lies with their organization, namely the board of directors and the management of EAC, but also in the Ministry of Energy.
The information of "F" states that both pre-election and in recent days the new President of the Republic has been informed at least about some of the hot funds in electricity and especially about:
1. The rather bad relations between the management/management of EAC and the three-member senior management of CERA, which bad relations are usually formed through the interventions of the guilds, rather than through public reports by officials of the organization,
2. The not-so-good cooperation that CERA and the Ministry of Energy have had lately, as the two authorities maintain disagreements on very critical issues and accuse each other in the background,
3. The assessment that exists - inside and outside the state machine - that the EAC Board of Directors has generally failed to address the challenges that are increasingly threatening EAC and has become aware of the urgent need that many point out - including in the entourage of the new President - for the appointment of a much more powerful and trained in energy issues board of directors,
4. The real risk of facing an electricity adequacy problem even this year, or much more likely in 2024, especially if the concerns that the 24th EAC unit under construction in Vasilikos and the licensed private unit of PEC in Vasilikos will not operate in '6, mainly due to possible non-timely operation of the LNG terminal, are confirmed,
5. The urgent need to modernize, upgrade and expand the transmission and distribution networks, but also to install -finally- smart meters by EAC (for safe management of the transmission network by the Operator), despite the fact that even these measures cannot fully solve the problems of preventing the penetration of RES in the electricity potential, without the operation of large storage systems and without the interconnection of the Cypriot network with that of Greece and,
6. The transformation, with great speed, of the green transition into a new industry producing excess profits for a few producers and suppliers, without any economic benefit for domestic consumers, at least.
The choice of the new Energy Minister could be a first indication of whether the new President has understood the seriousness of the situation in the energy sector.
