The Statutory City of Brno started the preparation of centralised procurement of energy supplies, i.e., electricity and gas, in 2012. Since then, seven public procurement contracts have been successively implemented in which the city acted as the central contracting authority and ensured procurement of energy not only for its own facilities, but also for the facilities of associated contracting authorities, i.e., businesses in which the city holds a majority ownership interest, city districts, government-funded organisations (of which the city or city districts are the founder), and the municipal police.
Six public contracts were realised generally for a period of one year by a one-off purchase. This April, however, the Brno City Council agreed to a four-year period and a gradual fixation of energy prices for individual years. At the end of August 2019, electricity and gas auctions for the period from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2023 were held on the POWER EXCHANGE CENTRAL EUROPE commodity exchange. On their basis, a supplier for both commodities was selected – Pražská plynárenská, a.s.
During September and October 2019, the Environmental Department of the Brno City Council carried out the necessary fixing steps to determine the unit energy prices for 2020. The price of electricity at the high-voltage level is CZK 1,425.27/MWh, which is significantly lower than the price valid for 2019 (CZK 1,581/MWh), and the price of gas is CZK 511.51/MWh, which is also a significant reduction compared to the price valid for 2019 (CZK 640/MWh). These prices do not include charges for distribution and related services, which are centrally regulated and therefore not controllable.
A total of 112 associated customers agreed to participate in the centralised energy procurement for the period 2020–23, with a projected consumption of 28,973 MWh of electricity and 34,962 MWh of gas in 2020. With this consumption and lower unit energy prices in 2020 compared to 2019, the following savings were achieved within the centralised procurement of energy supplies in Brno:
- Electricity CZK 4,512,000/year
- Gas CZK 4,492,000/year
- Total CZK 9,004,000/year
A significant contributor to these savings is the change in the method of purchases on the commodity exchange from a one-off purchase to a method of incremental fixing steps. This method will also be used to fix the energy price for the following years.