Public Tender as a Form of Selection of the Electricity Supplier for the Residents of the Commune

The chapter focuses on the performance of public tasks by communes in the scope of ensuring energy supply to its inhabitants. This issue is based primarily on the EU concept of the internal market. EU legislation has obliged EU member states to open up the electricity market to competition. In this respect, the provisions of EU directives have enabled electricity consumers to choose their electricity supplier. Communes are consumers of electricity. They purchase it in order to perform the tasks assigned to them in the scope of satisfying the inhabitants’ needs in the field of electricity. Since the commune is a public entity, it is obliged to purchase energy on the basis of transparent criteria, i.e. within the framework of a public procurement procedure. The aim of the chapter is to indicate which criteria should be taken into account by the commune when choosing the energy supplier, with the assumption that it should take into account not only price but also non-price factors, especially environmental protection during the generation of energy by energy companies. In the course of work on this chapter, the dogmatic method was used through the analysis of EU and Polish legislation.