Jouni Haikarainen, CEO of Lahti Energia, believes that electricity prices will fall in the spring anyway.
Mr Haikarainen admits that the energy crisis will affect electricity customers differently depending on when and what type of electricity contract they have.
– Consumers are in dire straits with expensive electricity and prices are prohibitive for some,” says Haikarainen.
He thinks that government action to help consumers is good in principle. But the problem with the price cap is that it does not encourage saving electricity. At present, domestic electricity production is not sufficient to meet consumption.
– We currently do not have enough electricity, there is a shortage of it and we have to bring it from Sweden.
Haikarainen reminds that money would also have to be found for support measures.
– The price ceiling model and other forms of support are all about what the state can afford. After all, all of these ultimately go to be paid for from the state’s budget funds.
Electricity consumption has decreased
The high price of electricity has caused citizens to reduce their consumption. If a price ceiling is set for electricity, Hairakainen suspects that consumption will rise again. At the same time, he rejects doubts that electricity producers would benefit from high prices.
– About 60 percent of our next year’s production is price protected, and the average price is about 6 cents per kilowatt hour, i.e. very moderate.
The CEO of Lahti Energia already sees a little light in the electricity market.
– All the signals seem to indicate that the market price will fall in the spring. The operation of the market will be normalized and fixed-price options will be significantly more affordable for consumers than at present.