A comprehensive online library bringing together resources on various regulatory issues from technical issue papers, benchmarking reports, sector analysis and podcasts produced by ERRA and its partner organisations.
This paper analyses the impact of this framework on the existing natural gas networks and the emerging hydrogen network and seeks to establish specifically whether its rules ensure flexibility and security of supply.
Some of the contents are as follows:
The paper concludes that although regulatory flexibility is built into the framework by establishing a transition implementation period, allowing exemptions and derogations for existing and new hydrogen infrastructure, and enabling financial and regulatory support via a PCI/PMI status, it is far from certain to be sufficient to enable the EU hydrogen market to develop at scale.
In his work, Mr. Dominic Scott the Senior Advisor and Consultant of RAP discusses the sustainability of investments in renewable energy because. He explains the price cannibalization and outlines several factors for it such as the falling costs of solar and wind technologies, the role of carbon pricing and the need for flexible technologies to manage fluctuations in renewable energy supply.
In this work, the authors present the major application and impact areas of Contracts-for-Difference (CfDs) in a European context, describe the most relevant design dimensions and discuss several design packages for CfDs as combinations of distinct design choices. They are discussed separately and in comparison.
The paper provides a detailed overview of CfD schemes implemented in Europe. This work comes against the backdrop of an ongoing European debate on reforming the electricity market and the broader introduction of CfDs.
By its Climate Protection Act Germany is committed to net zero GHG emissions by 2045, implying zero emissions from space heating, a major part of final energy consumption.
According to paper the present political discussion reflected in recent legislation is dominated by use of heat pumps and renewable power. This approach risks to fail due to too slow renewable roll out, bottlenecks in power infrastructure and lack of storage solutions to cover the strong seasonality of heating demand, from today’s 9.5 million gas heated and 6 million oil heated buildings. Replacing oil heating of 5 million buildings on the countryside by heat pumps has little alternative.
This paper illustrates that including district heating and switching from natural gas to green and blue hydrogen for about 5 million buildings each in urban areas, offers a realistic way to a zero CO2 heating sector by 2045. It suggests early actions needed to foster each of the three avenues and above all a paradigm change accepting that renewable energy supply and heat pumps have to be complemented by fossil fuels with CCS to achieve reliable and CO2 free heating by 2045.
This report provides a general overview of the regulatory regimes applied in 2023 and the required efficiency developments. It also analyses the overall determination of capital costs of CEER members plus Northern Ireland and five Energy Community Regulatory Board (ECRB) members, four of whom are also CEER observers.
A major focus is placed on the calculation of an adequate rate of return (RoR), the determination of the regulatory asset base (RAB) and the depreciation of assets in the different regulatory regimes.
Other important individual parameters and new incentive mechanisms presented in this study should be interpreted in the context of a whole country-specific regulatory regime. Some contents only reflect an ex-ante approach for 2023, while ex-post calculations are yet to be performed.
Presentation by Mr. Gatis Junghāns, Board Member of AS Augstsprieguma tīkls (AST) in Latvia was given as a part of ERRA’s Joint Electricity Markets and Economic Regulation (EMER COM) & Renewable Energy (RE COM) Committee Meeting held in Bratislava, Slovakia on March 7, 2024.
Presentation by Mr. Zoltán Pataki, Director of Regulatory & Stakeholder Affairs at E.ON Hungary was given as a part of ERRA’s Joint Electricity Markets and Economic Regulation (EMER COM) & Renewable Energy (RE COM) Committee Meeting held in Bratislava, Slovakia on March 7, 2024.
Presentation by Mr. Karolis Kiguolis, Founder & CEO of Linea Ignis in Lithuania was given as a part of ERRA’s Joint Electricity Markets and Economic Regulation (EMER COM) & Renewable Energy (RE COM) Committee Meeting held in Bratislava, Slovakia on March 7, 2024.
Presentation by Ms. Zsuzsanna Pato, Senior Advisor & Consultant at Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) was given as a part of ERRA’s Joint Electricity Markets and Economic Regulation (EMER COM) & Renewable Energy (RE COM) Committee Meeting held in Bratislava, Slovakia on March 7, 2024.
DNV’s annual Energy Transition Outlook presents the results from their independent model of the world’s energy system. It covers the period through to 2050 and forecasts the energy mix, supply and demand globally and in 10 world regions: North America (NAM), Latin America (LAM), Europe (EUR), North East Eurasia (NEE), South East Asia (SEA), Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Middle East, North Africa (MEA), Greater China (CHN), Indian Subcontinent (IND) and OECD Pacific (OPA).
Some of the important topics report contains are as follows:
In 2021, nuclear energy accounted for approximately 20 percent of total U.S. electric generation and almost 50 percent of its carbon-free electricity. Over the decades of operation, nuclear energy has proven to be one of the lowest-cost and most reliable energy resources integrated into the U.S. electric grid. To achieve ambitious decarbonization goals, retaining the existing and expanding the new nuclear energy resource base will be of critical importance.
Read more in this report authored by Phillip Graeter and Deeksha Anand of Energy Ventures Analysis and developed by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Center for Partnerships and Innovation.
Some of the chapters from the report:
This report - authored by Kathryn Kline, Sam Stephens, and Kiera Zitelman - was developed under the project: “U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-NARUC Nuclear Energy Partnership,” an initiative of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Center for Partnerships and Innovation. It overviews IRPs and existing and advanced nuclear generation. The authors also review the inclusions of advanced nuclear in selected recently filed IRPs and offer questions and considerations for public utility regulators.
The report contains:
The report is structured as follows:
This benchmarking initiative would not have been possible without the invaluable contributions of the participating ERRA Natural Gas Markets and Economic Regulation Committee member NRAs.
This report analyses the energy transition efforts of several developed non-ERRA countries. It extracts key lessons, best practices and innovative approaches for others to follow for a sustainable energy future. The report explores indicators such as renewable energy generation, energy efficiency measures, carbon emissions reduction, and the policy and regulatory frameworks that help successful energy transitions. Through unique examples and comparative analysis, the report aims to provide valuable insights for ERRA members working towards a sustainable energy future.
It delves into the achievements of Sweden, Costa Rica, Brazil, New Zealand and Spain, which have successfully navigated the complexities of energy transition. It highlights their unique approaches and innovative solutions. These best practices can potentially guide ERRA countries in adopting effective strategies for the energy transition.
The report is structured as follows:
This is Part 2 in a series of booklets that aim to provide individuals working in the regulated aviation, communications, energy, rail and water sectors with an introductory guide to the principles and practices of economic regulation.
The focus of this booklet is price regulation. Specifically: how do regulators calculate the price controls?
This study examines the production, transport and supply costs of key Power-to-X products for the year 2030. A total of 39 globally distributed regions in developing and emerging countries were therefore analyzed in terms of their renewables and Power-to-X production and supply cost potential. Power-to-X refers to processes in which electricity is converted into storable energy carriers. “Power” refers to the use of green electricity obtained from renewable energy sources, and “X” stands for the form of the energy produced, e.g. gas or liquid, or its intended product, e.g. ammonia.
Some of the conclusions for optimal Power-to-X production:
This study was prepared by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE on behalf of the H2Global Foundation.
The comprehensive report by the ERRA Customer Protection Working Group (CP) on New Phenomena in the Energy Markets examines the regulatory landscape for energy prosumers, citizen energy communities, as well as peer-to-peer trading and energy sharing across various ERRA member countries. The study evaluates the legal frameworks, practical instances, and operational challenges associated with these novel energy market concepts, shedding light on diverse approaches adopted by different states.
The findings of this report serve as valuable insights for policymakers, regulators, and energy sector stakeholders as they navigate the complex terrain of modern energy markets across many jurisdictions.
Establishing appropriate institutional architecture is important to integrate power systems across borders and facilitate electricity trading, as even if the necessary infrastructure is in place, it does not automatically follow that it is being used to exchange power effectively. The co-ordination of all stakeholders – governments, utilities1 and regulators – is required within jurisdictions, as is the creation of regional entities to support and oversee the integration process.
This report therefore examines stakeholder roles at different stages of crossborder integration to enable multilateral power trade. As energy regulators are our main audience, we focus on their roles and responsibilities after briefly addressing those of governments and utilities.
This document was developed under the Regulatory Energy Transition Accelerator (RETA) initiative, which aims to enhance the capacity of regulators to increase the speed of clean energy transitions. It is part of a series of guidance notes prepared by the IEA, the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) and IRENA to help key stakeholders navigate the challenges associated with regional power system interconnections, by providing analytical outputs and examples of best practices for regulatory frameworks and mechanisms. These notes focus on the soft infrastructure of cross-border power exchange, in accordance with the priority topics identified through a survey of regulators in February-March 2023.
Published by the Hungarian Energy and Public Utility Regulatory Authority (MEKH) on the occasion of the 20th ERRA Annual Conference on 9-10 October 2023 in Budapest.
Publication includes:
Energy regulatory bodies play one of the most essential roles in modern energy systems. Considering the international experience, most existing legislations define the basic principles of the functioning of the energy regulatory bodies, which are more or less common at the international level.
It is worth noting that the functions of energy regulators, which are determined by the modern legal regulations of different countries, undergo constant transformation, improvement and development over time. In addition, the discussion about the role and function of energy regulators in the future is still ongoing. The preceding research paper aims to analyze these issues. It presents the functional evolution of energy regulators from the beginning. Some considerations regarding the future of energy regulators are also offered. The paper also presents the results of the Survey conducted among the regulators of different countries of the world. It provides essential information on the functional evolution of the regulators and the perspectives of how the regulators see their future activities and functions.
The research paper was prepared b Dr. Givi Adamia, Secondee of ERRA, Chief Specialist of the Legal Department at the Georgian National Energy and Water Supply Regulatory (GNERC).
This report highlights experiences from the recent energy crisis that can serve as a guide for Energy Regulators Regional Association (ERRA) member countries’ preparation for and responses to future crises.
Drawing on examples from a wide range of countries, with different energy markets and systems, the report provides:
Guarantees of origin (GOs) are one of the key tools for greening the energy sector and contributing to the transition to net-zero energy. The basic idea of a system of GOs is based on the physical fact that once the energy produced is delivered to the electricity, gas, or heat system, its origin can no longer be distinguished. In order to support the installation and efficient operation of various renewable energy technologies, the members of the ERRA Renewable Energy Committee have undertaken the task of mapping the existence of GOs schemes.
We now publish our latest internal survey results on Guarantees of Origin Systems, prepared based on information received from 20 ERRA-member countries.
The Netherlands is faced with the challenge of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. This challenge requires substantial efforts from network operators and has prompted the energy regulator ACM to take a critical look at the way it organizes the regulation of network operators. It is important to obtain, at an early stage, an accurate picture of both, the bottlenecks and the opportunities with regard to the energy transition, arising from the regulation of network operators. In this regard, insights into the regulation of network operators in other European countries can be of great value. ACM has commissioned DNV Energy Systems (“DNV”) to obtain the insights.
The purpose of the study is to gather inspiration for instruments and new insights which could be considered in the Netherlands.
This is done by reviewing the main characteristics and effectiveness of the instruments used in the economic regulation of electricity transmission and distribution networks in selected countries. The list of countries is Belgium, Germany, Finland, Italy and Great Britain (main sample); and Norway, Australia and Emirate of Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) (extended sample). Building on the findings from the analysis, we assess the applicability of regulatory instruments for the regulatory arrangements in the Netherlands.
The analysis reviews major properties of the regulatory instruments in the investigated countries. The instruments are grouped in the following regulatory areas: price regulation methods, OPEX and CAPEX classification, assessment methods, efficiency incentives, investment incentives, innovation incentives, supplementary incentives, forward-looking estimations, dealing with uncertainty and new thinking / new concepts.
ACER, in collaboration with PwC consultants, publishes its second report on unit investment costs indicators. In addition, ACER publishes an energy infrastructure unit investment cost calculator, in Excel format, to facilitate future estimations of unit investment costs.
The 2023 report presents:The following report is the new addition to the Status Quo Report on Deregulation of Electricity Markets in 17 ERRA Member Countries published by the ERRA Secretariat in March 2022. It follows up with the previous report by the members of the ERRA Electricity Markets and Economic Regulation Committee (EMER COM) with the current developments in the electricity sector, and how the energy crisis impacted the deregulating electricity market within these countries from March 2022.
18 EMER COM members participated in the survey by addressing the following scope:The ERRA Glossary of Energy Transition Terms comprises about 150 practical definitions referring to energy transition and climate change. The resource was compiled by ERRA Energy Transition Task Force.
Beyond the short-term issues, the energy crisis in Europe raises long-term questions that are disrupting the organisation of the electricity markets: security of supply, price levels and volatility, investments in the energy transition, costs for consumers, etc. CRE France held its Symposium in December 2022 on this topic and the speakers/ group of academics completed a report with a review of the academic literature on the issues of the reform of the European electricity market.
Energie-Control Austria, the Hungarian Energy and Public Utility Regulatory Authority (MEKH) have contracted a consultant to develop the Household Energy Price Index for Europe (HEPI) in order to track energy prices.
HEPI provides granular insight into current and historical European residential energy prices in 33 European capital cities on a monthly basis starting from January 2009.
The Story describes the Index with a methodology note and provides an interview with Mr Johannes Mayer, Director for Regulation and Competition at E-Control, who describes project background, synergies stemming from the cooperation with MEKH as well as project outputs and outcomes.
In this 7th Benchmarking Report on the Quality of Electricity and Gas Supply, for the first time jointly written by CEER and the Energy Community Regulatory Board (ECRB), the main focus is on monitoring of the quality of electricity and gas supply, which constitutes an essential tool in the overall supervision of well-functioning energy markets. CEER and ECRB seek to provide valuable information on the practices regarding quality of supply and the regulatory framework, with associated recommendations for good regulatory practices and incentives that could be adopted in Europe.
A few findings to highlight include that, excluding exceptional events, the majority of countries decreased or at least maintained their unplanned minutes lost and the number of interruptions per customer from the beginning to the end of the observed period for electricity. Interruptions in gas, while much less common than those in electricity, can lead to a high risk of safety, resulting in greater efforts to avoid an interruption than in electricity. Even though gas interruptions are less frequent, they usually last longer than those in electricity. Many countries reported improved continuity of supply (a shorter duration or a lower number of interruptions) when incentive regimes/compensation schemes were implemented, even with indicators that are not regulated.
The summary report contains all takeaways from the workshop ERRA held with MEDREG on December 6th, 2022 in Istanbul with the main focus on regulatory sandboxes.
The event's key messages are as follows:This companion piece to the Fall 2022 ECA Economic Update (World Bank 2022c) provides an overview of the policy options available to ECA countries to respond to the energy price shock and examines how this crisis could harness the clean energy transition to enhance collective energy security. The options to support energy markets, vulnerable households, and firms will vary, depending on specific country contexts, including exposure to gas and electricity supply risks and the fiscal space available to mitigate their impact. Well-coordinated and calibrated fiscal and monetary policies are needed to manage the impact of the price shock. Countries will also need to consider the implications of any policy choice on the transition to a greener economy and development trajectories.
This note is organized as follows:Europe has recently confirmed and augmented its commitment towards full decarbonization through the EU Green Deal and the Fit for 55 package. Energy policy struggles to keep up with technical and business novelties, often constituting an obstacle for technological innovation. Regulatory sandboxes and pilot projects have recently played a central role in the policy strategy adopted by many countries, but a common framework is still missing. In this work, moving from the approaches adopted by Ofgem in Great Britain and Arera in Italy, a list of experimental dimensions is firstly proposed, and the most important trialling experiences individuated worldwide are mapped on it. Therefore, clustering these experiences based on their characteristics, a reference taxonomy to design and classify regulatory experiments is proposed. In parallel, topics addressed within trials are described and mapped on the main challenges posed by EU Green Deal targets on the power system. The analysis highlights that there is no one-size-fits-all approach towards regulatory experimentation, and that effort is needed to ensure coordinated initiatives within and among European countries, in order to timely achieve a netzero energy system in the most effective way.
ERRA Renewable Committee's survey: E-Mobility: Status Update, Plans and Related Regulatory Issues. The recent increase in energy costs increases the need for smart integration of EVs into power grids to lower the cost for EV users and service providers. EVs have been on the radar of energy regulators for quite some time, that is why ERRA regularly monitors developments with regards to e-mobility regulations among its members. The internal survey results on E-mobility, prepared based on information collected from 17 ERRA Renewable Committee Members.
Review and executive summary by Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP).
Based on the latest energy data and market developments, this year’s WEO explores key questions about the first global energy crisis: Will it be a setback for clean energy transitions or a catalyst for greater action? How might government responses shape energy markets? Which energy security risks lie ahead on the path to net zero emissions?
This flagship publication of the IEA has appeared every year since 1998. Its objective data and dispassionate analysis provide critical insights into global energy supply and demand in different scenarios and the implications for energy security, climate targets and economic development.
ERRA continues to update its concise Glossary of energy sector terms specific to the energy regulatory community. Great stuff for entry level regulators!