Energy crisis?

An investment budget of EUR 100 million.

an investment budget of EUR 100 million to develop solar projects for energy-intensive businesses that do not have sufficient roof space to install solar panels themselves. We will install these solar projects both on rooftops and on the ground, and will supply this electricity directly to the businesses, which will be able to purchase it at a low, fixed price.

We have reduced the prices of our products.

We have reduced the prices of our self-consumption package for households in Flanders. We install solar panels free of charge. Households can purchase electricity at a fixed price (€0.20/kWh all-inclusive) or at a variable price (30% lower than the customer’s current energy price). Our prices are lower than the social tariff for electricity and our contracts can be cancelled annually.

We guaranteed a fixed price that remains unchanged for the long term.

We guaranteed all our industrial customers for whom we installed solar panels a fixed price that remains unchanged for the long term. Even now that energy prices are spiralling out of control, and even now that the banding factor has fallen to zero, we continue to maintain the same fixed, predictable price (with a maximum annual price increase of 2%, but no link to energy prices or inflation).

A call to use excess profits to tackle the social problems caused by energy prices.

We reiterated our call from July for the sector as a whole to use its windfall profits to tackle the major social problems caused by energy prices. As a company, we only make excess profits on the energy we feed into the grid. This amounts to less than one per cent of our consolidated annual turnover. It is neither normal nor healthy that we were able to feed our surplus energy into the grid in the summer at €400 or more per MWh instead of €40 or less.

To help as many businesses and households as possible get through the energy crisis.

We are doing everything in our power to help as many businesses and households as possible get through the energy crisis. Our top priority has been the most vulnerable groups: in Brussels, our Brusol programme focuses primarily on disadvantaged households and small rooftops, whilst in Flanders we have been working with ASTER to scale up our efforts as much as possible to install solar panels on as many social housing units as possible before spring 2023.

We launched initiatives to help our staff get through the winter.

We launched initiatives to help our staff get through the winter. In Flanders, we did not have a licence to supply energy to households. We applied for and were granted an exemption via the VREG to be able to do so for our staff. All our employees received a three-year energy contract from us, allowing them to purchase electricity at 2019–2020 prices. To this end, we are utilising our own energy projects and supplying this electricity, at a fixed cost of 0.10 EUR/kWh (excluding distribution and other costs, excluding VAT), to our employees’ connection points. We also brought forward the indexation of salaries: instead of it taking effect on 1 January 2023, we implemented the full indexation from 1 October 2022 (with the exception of management).