In a case concerning cartel formation in the electricity market, where five CHP plants and the company Effekthandel have sued the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority, the plaintiffs have been fined, the Maritime and Commercial Court informs. The judgment has not yet been published on the court's website. This will be done at a later date.
The court informs Ritzau that the decision must be anonymized and presented to the parties before further information about the judgment, including the size of the fine and the grounds for the judgment, will be provided.
However, the substance of the case is already well known. It concerns whether a number of combined heat and power plants, when selling so-called reserve capacity to the electricity market, have formed a cartel, have had prices artificially raised and divided the spoils among themselves.
The Competition Council believes that this was the case, and in a decision in December 2023 it assessed that the rules in this area had been violated.
Earned money even when losing bids
In this connection, the Competition Council assumed that 49 plants had let the company Effekthandel set the plants' prices for reserve capacity when it was to be sold at auction.
Effekthandel informed the energy plants in joint emails about the individual plants' registered capacity and a distribution key that indicated how much each plant should have paid out.
Regardless of whether a plant won the auction with its bid or not, there was money to be made, and at the same time there was also money to Effekthandel, which received a commission for its role.
Five of the plants, Brøns Kraftvarmeværk, Hvide Sande Fjernvarme, Jetsmark Energiværk, Øster Brønderslev Fjernvarmeværk and Bramming Fjernvarme, as well as Effekthandel, have sued the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority with a view to having the decision overturned.
The case is in the nature of a so-called test case, which means that the decision is a matter of principle and must therefore be assumed to also apply to the CHP plants that have not been part of the case in the Maritime and Commercial Court.
/ritzau/
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