The request made by the incinerator in Elbasan, currently operated by the ‘Albtek’ company, to set the price of its produced energy, was yet again refused by The Albanian Energy Regulator Authority (ERE). Moreover, ERE claimed that the installed power of the plant is 2.85MW and therefore it surpasses the permitted 2 MW limit. In accordance to this decision, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy has left the incinerator unable to sell the energy it produces. Its operator, ‘Albtek’ company, has applied for the pricing process of the incinerator’s energy numerous times, but so far ERE has remained reluctant in granting the request.
This deadlock was further explained by the board member of ERE, Erjola Sadushi, who said that ERE can approve prices regarding subjects which have final clients to whom they sell energy to, but in this case we are dealing with a single subject and therefore its energy needs to be sold to OSHEE. According to Sadushi, the subject in question is involved in only one concessionary contract. “For these types of power plants, ERE deals with the entire category instead of dealing solely with a single subject. In this case we cannot set a price even if the installed power was within the required 2MW limit,” Sadushi said.
Another board member, Rajmonda Ismailaj, emphasized that this case is so specific because they are dealing with a Public Private Partnership. “We cannot set a specific price only for this incinerator. In the case of ‘Albtek’, ERE sets average production prices for the group in reference to the methodology that considers the investment and operating costs and smaller parties over the amount of produced energy and the deadline. This company is a PPP, meaning that the costs are only operational as the government is paying for the investments and therefore that makes our formula invalid. We are not in the condition to set a price which is beyond the methodology approved by the Council of Ministers Decision,” Ismailaj said. With the company being part of a concessionary contract, the energy’s selling price would be too high. She added that the subject in question fills only 10 percent of the approved formula’s indicators.
The incinerator in Elbasan which is operated by Albtek Energy through a concessionary contract, is currently fully functional at a cost of 43 million euros. The processing capacity based on the contract is around 120-140 tonnes/day, producing an amount of energy in the process.
