IBERSOL | Integrated Management Report 2022

INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT REPORT 2022 Energy Market and Contracting of Energy Resources In 2022 the war in Ukraine, which began in February, caused a ma- jor disruption in the energy commodities markets. The restriction of natural gas supply by Russia, the world’s main producer, translated into a sharp increase in the price of natural gas and, indirectly, also of electricity. In Europe, the European Union (EU) sought to mitigate this adverse impact by diversifying natural gas supply sources, re- orienting electricity generation sources and rationalising internal en- ergy consumption and, in particular, Portugal and Spain found added support in the context of the Iberian energy market. In the Ibersol Group the electricity contracts are in the free market regime, ending in June 2024. The negotiation of the electricity prices was carried out in 2020, so, considering the evolution of the global electricity market, in 2022 the negotiated prices were lower than the market prices. After July 2022 the contracts benefited from the re- duction in the network access tariffs. For the Group’s restaurants gas contracts were held in liberalised market until September 2022. Gas prices were negotiated in 2021 and therefore throughout 2022 were below market prices, strongly impacted by the war in Ukraine. From October 2022, for restaurants with annual gas consumption of up to 10 000 m3, it was opted to contract with the Supplier of Last Resort (CUR), regulated market, because the price of the gas energy component was lower than the price of gas energy in the free market. The remaining facilities with annual consumption over 10,000 m3, in accordance with legislation, remained in the liberalised market. Due to the perspective of lower market prices, for these gas consump- tions it was decided to contract in the natural gas indexed market. 193