Energy prices in Greece in the last 50 years: From prosperity to decline

[There is also a Greek version of the post—Υπάρχει και ελληνική έκδοση της ανάρτησης]

In reply to a comment of an earlier post, I wrote:

Climate and energy are different things—only connected within the climandate. I am not discussing energy issues here—they are out of scope [of that post]. Hopefully, we'll have the opportunity to discuss them in due time in other posts.

So today’s post is a digression from the main topic, climate mathematics, as it relates to energy. I wanted to celebrate the publication of a paper by my colleagues and me, which was published today:

G.-F. Sargentis, R. Ioannidis, N. Mamassis, V. Zoukos, and D. Koutsoyiannis, A review of the energy policy in Greece in the last 50 years and its implications for prosperity, Clean Energy and Sustainability, 2 (4), 10021, doi:10.70322/ces.2024.10021, 2024.

Naturally, this paper was rejected before, by two journals. The rejection prehistory is provided in the above link. Actually, we had suspected that it would be rejected, because of the inconvenient information it contains. Therefore, we did not choose high-profile journals to submit it. Rather, our criteria for choosing a journal were (a) a low-profile, not-well known, journal; (b) open access; (c) an offer to publish free of charge. Yet both these low-profile journals rejected the paper. I see these rejections as a classic case of blocking a publication that does not conform to the narrative. The reviewers just wanted to provide some excuses for the predetermined blocking.

The paper does not contain high-level mathematics or any kind of model. It simply presents data, which speak for themselves. Data on the electricity prices in Greece from a few years after the creation of the nation-level Public Power Corporation (PPC—ΔΕΗ in Greek) until today (last available year: 2023).

The data were extremely hard to find. When we made an official request for the kWh price data to the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) they replied that they did not have them. We received the same reply from the PPC.

Finally, after an investigation of one of the co-authors, who was working in the PPC (now retired), we got in contact with the Head of Tariff Policy of PPC, who kept the data (possibly out of personal interest) and was very kind to share them with us. Later we verified them in some dusty EU reports on the internet.

Why the data were hidden, one may ask? Perhaps because they say an inconvenient truth? Anyhow, they are not hidden any more, as we have published them in the paper in tabulated form (Appendix A). The figure below (from the paper) gives a graphical depiction.

Figure 2. Prices of electricity after conversion (in current €/kWh) for a typical household in Greece, 1969–2023.

Before 2004 ± 2 years¹, the trend was going down. Technology development and rational management were pushing the prices down. Then the decline started, which is reflected in the rising energy price.

What happened in 2004? Well, we had the Athens Olympics. We also had a new government, which two years later (2006) passed a law regulating the prices of wind and solar energy in Greece, setting the wholesale prices at 73 €/MWh (wind) to 500 €/MWh (solar), at a time when the retail (night) price was ~50 €/MWh. One might think that this regulation provided a generous subsidy reaching 900% (= (500 – 50) / 50). However, this calculation is wrong. In fact, the subsidy was over 3 000% as can be seen in slide 4 of my presentation:

D. Koutsoyiannis, The unavoidable uncertainty of renewable energy and its management, European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2016, Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 18, Vienna, EGU2016–18430, doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.36312.70400, European Geosciences Union, 2016.

Later legislation alleviated these scandalous regulations, which were robbery to consumers and offensive to reason. Yet, it would be reasonable to expect that the introduction of wind and solar energy would push the prices up—and this is verified by the following graph from the paper.

Figure 7. Price of electricity in relation to electricity generation by WASES [Wind And Solar Energy Sources]. For comparison the ratio of wind and solar generation to total electricity generation is also plotted.

It is well known that these regulations were dictated by the European Union policies on the pretext of fighting climate change. Other earlier European Union regulations² resulted in the loss of the public character of the PPC—even though it abusively kept the “P” for public (“Δ” in Greek for “Δημόσια”). The pretext was that privatization would lower the prices and benefit the consumers.

The data say that all these were lies.

1. In my career, 2004 was a tipping-point year. Before 2004, I was able to maintain a large research team, regularly paid from (mostly national) funds that were given to study real-world problems. After 2004, the interest in solving real-world problems collapsed. So, the research team was reduced and mostly not paid. We were not good at selling solutions for imaginary-world problems, which interested the European Union and, by infection, the pariah state of Greece.

2. We should not forget that Greece adopted the euro in 2001, being among the first wave of countries to launch euro banknotes and coins on 1 January 2002.