From businesses to institutions, how will large energy consumers be identified?

2023-09-07 08:51:00, Aktualitet CNA

The government aims to identify all large energy consumers, which include businesses and institutions that have a consumption level of 1 million kWh.

In an instruction of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy published in the Official Gazette, it is sanctioned that the Agency for Energy Efficiency is the entity charged with the task of identifying and registering these units.

In the same notebook, another path has been published, which foresees energy saving plans from this contingent, predicting how the measures will be implemented to achieve the objectives.

Specifically, as regards large consumers, the instruction underlines that AEE identifies them through several forms, including by asking the Energy Distribution Operator and the Transmission System Operator by January 31st for a list of customers with consumption over 0.5 million kWh.

All consumers resulting in a consumption greater than 1 million kWh of electricity during the previous year are included in the list of large energy consumers, which is created and updated by AEE.

The agency requests within February of each year from consumers who have consumed 0.5-1 million kWh during the previous year to submit data related to the consumption of other energy sources, if any, for the previous year. Customers send the data requested under this letter by March 31.

In one of its points, the instruction specifies that the Agency can request from the entities according to the category they belong to the consumption per area, while for hotels or nurseries and kindergartens the consumption per area and the number of beds or overnight stays. The data obtained by the Agency in the function of creating the register of large consumers may be published while preserving their confidential data.

Order for action plans

The directive on the identification of large consumers approved by the ministry seems to be closely related to another by-law that belongs to the law on energy efficiency that aims to save through the implementation of action plans.

This is about the action plans of these consumers and the achievement of a certain savings target. This means that each of them must have an action plan which defines the year and the measures to be taken defining a 3-year time frame. Its implementation is monitored by the Energy Efficiency Agency. This process is carried out through audit reports that are undertaken for each major energy consumer.

Energy plans are drawn up by energy managers, a link that has been operating for some time in the country. This plan can only be changed if a request is made to the agency summarizing the measures that are added or changed as well as the new savings objectives./ Monitor.al