Overview: A New Energy & Climate Package for the EU
Faster, stronger and more transparent. Will European energy strategy be based on this principle? Despite the wishes and intentions of European experts, it will all boil down to the implementation of the 2030 framework for climate and energy policy. And this process will be everything but trivial.
This was a view emerging from the conference “A New Energy & Climate Package for the EU” organised by EGMONT and Development Group.
IMPLEMENTATION TIMING NOT AN EASY THING
“Our biggest problem is implementation timing” Secretary-General of ENTSO-E Konstantin Staschus said, adding that the process is still too slow.
The litmus test for the speed and resolve of European institutions is not too far down the road. According to Staschus, the Comitology should vote on the Capacity Allocation Congestion Management (CACM) network code this Friday.
The CACM was the first code to enter Comitology in December 2013.
In case of a favourable vote, the approval process will continue as follows: i. the cross border committee delivers its opinion, ii. the European Commission submits the Code for scrutiny to the Council and the European Parliament, iii. the Network Code is adopted. The implementation process then begins.
‘CACM sets out rules for calculating cross-border capacity, defining and reviewing bidding zones and operating day ahead and intraday markets. Many of the subjects included in the CACM are highly complex and there is relatively little operational experience on which to draw from (for example the flow-based method of capacity calculation). For this reason, CACM requires additional work and a series of methodologies to be jointly developed and approved by regulators after the code enters into force’ reads the ENTO-E page about the CACM.
In this sense, the extensive consultation process and the complexity of the issue make the case for a long time. But this does not mean that other Network Codes will automatically be faster.
COMPLEXITIES OF ENERGY: "LAGGARD" SECTOR WHERE EVERYBODY LOBBIES
According to Jean-Arnold Vinois, Honorary Director of the European Commission - Directorate General for Energy, energy is a late comer in the process of Europeanisation.
“Energy has been the last sector to be Europeanised,” said Vinois, explaining that energy is a very recent area of concern in the European Union.
Apart from this delay, which intuitively could have caused a lack of competencies in the recent past, another problem is the lack of common positions. The European capital is the place where everybody furthers his own cause, added Vinois.
WHAT’S THE LESSON?
“All this is complex stuff. Let’s not feel to bad about it. The Americans market is quite fragmented, the Chinese market does not even exist… Let’s not underestimate the clarity we got,” Staschus argued.
At the same time the Secretary General of ENTSO-E closed his intervention, repeating that faster reactions are necessary.
“So, let’s not overstate the uncertainties we have got. Uncertainties are poisonous for new investments… The only thing that we need to learn is to be faster in building lines and faster in improving Network Codes.”
Sergio Matalucci
Sergio Matalucci is an Associate Partner at Natural Gas Europe. Follow him on Twitter: @SergioMatalucci