The large electricity consumers today warned about the “underfunding” of the mechanism that compensates industry for the costs of CO2 emission allowances reflected in electricity prices, urging the implementation of support totaling 100 million euros.
According to the Portuguese Association of Large Electricity Consumer Industries (APIGCEE), there is “persistent underfunding of the mechanism that compensates industry for the costs of CO2 emission allowances passed on in electricity prices (indirect costs of CELE), a tool provided in the European framework precisely to protect from relocation the industrial sectors exposed to international competition.”
According to the association, the notice published by the Environmental Fund opened on July 10 applications for costs incurred in 2025, with an allocation of €30 million.
“This is a 40% cut compared with the €50 million allocated in 2025, at a moment when the universe of eligible sectors was expanded by a European decision,” stressed in the same note.
The association recalled that the Minister of Environment and Energy publicly assumed the goal of raising the support to €100 million still this year, after authorisation from the European Commission in September 2025.
“APIGCEE welcomed that commitment, which it considers a decisive step in the right direction. The boost has not yet been formalised, however,” it indicated, lamenting that the current call maintains €30 million.
“It is important to emphasise that Portugal has already transposed, through Ordinance No. 276/2026/1, dated 26 June, the new European Guidelines — expansion to new sectors and the increase of the maximum aid intensity to 80%/75% — just like the other Member States,” it said.
For the association, the difference is not in the mechanism’s design but in the allocation and “ambition,” pointing out that Spain opened its call on 29 July with €600 million, “maintaining the previous year’s budget despite the same expansion to 22 new sectors.”
France and Germany go further, it added, paying “the total amount allowed by European rules, including the top-up (“supercap”) that raises the effective aid intensity to 100%.”
In the German case, it accounts for an allocation estimated at around €4 billion in 2026.
“APIGCEE calls for the reinforcement of the allocation to €100 million to be formalized in time to produce effects in the decision on awarding the current call, whose applications close on 10 August,” it stated.
The association also guaranteed that the “relevant metric is not the absolute value, but the relative effort to the size of each economy,” noting that “for each €1 million of GDP, the 2026 allocation represents €104 in Portugal, €376 in Spain, €358 in France and €924 in Germany — in other words, the main direct competitors of Portuguese industry support between 3.4 and 8.9 times more, in comparable terms.”
Citing official European Commission data, the association said that in 2024 Portugal paid €25 million in compensations, having been “the lowest value among the 15 Member States applying the mechanism.”
The association explained that, considering that “the national allocation has been lower than the sum of the calculated values, Portugal applies a pro rata distribution among beneficiaries,” i.e., in 2025 “each company received only 63.68% of the amount calculated according to the formula allowed by Brussels,” and “the calculated amount itself corresponded to only 75% of the eligible indirect costs.”
For this year, APIGCEE estimates that “the pro rata factor will fall to around 49.5%,” since, according to the association, “although the price of CO2 used as the basis for calculating the support has fallen by about 25% compared with the previous year, the 40% cut in the allocation more than offsets this relief” and “this value does not yet account for the entry of new eligible sectors.”
