ESM Won't Raise the Electricity Price for EVN Home, but District Heating Gets Pricier From January: Gas Costs Three Times More Than Last Year

In October, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski counted ESM among the companies asking for a price correction. Now the message is the opposite. In EVN Home's new public tender, the state power company will offer the same price as before: 65 euros per megawatt-hour. "We made a business plan under which we won't ask for an increase in the electricity price. The product will be at the same price," Mickoski said.

The goal, he says, is for ESM to end 2027 with a profit. Sounds good. But that is the price at which ESM sells power to the universal supplier, not the price households see on their bill.

Bills from 1 January will also be affected by transmission and distribution tariffs, which the Energy Regulatory Commission decides on. MEPSO has already asked for the transmission tariff to rise by 97.68 percent. Transmission is only one item in the calculation, but when that item asks for nearly double, ESM's "same price" doesn't automatically mean the same bill for citizens. It's also still unclear what offers private energy companies will come out with.

District heating is another story

On heating, Mickoski promises nothing of the sort. "As for Toplifikacija, a very big price increase is being requested there," he said, explaining that gas is three times more expensive than a year ago. According to him, natural gas has passed 90 euros per megawatt-hour, and electricity on European exchanges has reached 400 euros per megawatt-hour.

ESM points out that gas on the EEX/TTF exchange in October was around 60 percent more expensive than the price assumed when the current tariffs were approved. Companies in the heating sector want their approved revenues corrected, and the ERC has to check which costs are justified before deciding whether, and by how much, heating will go up.

Skopje residents on central heating have already been paying more since 1 August: from 3.6 to almost 6 percent, depending on the operator, and for households supplied by "ESM Snabduvanje" the increase was 5.96 percent. Now, from the start of 2027, another one is coming.

The Government is announcing measures to protect citizens, but for now there is neither a mechanism nor a figure for how much heating would go up. The message that heating will get more expensive, just not by as much as requested, sounds good only until the first bill. How much exactly - and who pays the rest?