The Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) and several NGOs expressed a number of reservations regarding the proposal for a revision of the EU Regulation (347/2013) on Trans-European Energy Networks (TEN-E) presented by Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson on Tuesday 15 December.
Governance
While regulators have welcomed the fact that the revision proposes to make scenario planning for energy infrastructure more neutral, notably by strengthening the role of ACER (see EUROPE 12623/3, 12618/9), they believe that there is scope to further improve the TEN-E process and ensure better regulatory oversight.
Under the proposed revision, ACER would be responsible for publishing guidelines for the development of common scenarios and approving incremental updates to project cost-benefit analysis methodologies.
However, according to Christian Zinglersen, Director of ACER, “the new process for cost-benefit analysis methodologies is overly complicated and may not fit well with the agility needed for the Ten-Year Network Development Plan and PCI [editor’s note: projects of common interest] processes, which have a 2-year cycle”.
He therefore recommends that ACER be empowered to approve the methodologies of the cost-benefit analyses cost-benefit analyses and to issue binding guidelines to ensure simple and rapid processes and appropriate regulatory control of proposals from the European Networks of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) and Gas (ENTSO-G).
Like Mr Zinglersen, the President of CEER, Annegret Groebel, also calls for a stronger monitoring of the leading role of the ENTSOs in the infrastructure planning process.
She further believes that “national regulators should have the power to approve/amend the National Development Plans” in order to ensure consistency between the ten-year network development plans (TYNDPs) and national plans.
“Regulators, who are closest to the projects, are best-placed to decide on how to allocate the costs of cross-border energy projects in a coordinated way within ACER”, she said.
Despite the fact that the revised governance provisions also provide for increased stakeholder involvement throughout the infrastructure planning process and better oversight by the Commission (which would be empowered to review and approve the main steps of the process), this criticism of regulators has also been expressed by other stakeholders.
The European Parliament’s rapporteur on the strategy for the integration of energy systems (see EUROPE 12601/9), Christophe Grudler (Renew Europe, France), expressed his concern about the new governance of the TYNPDs, considering it to be unambitious and out of step with the European strategy for the integration of energy systems.
The ENTSO-E and ENTSO-G entities retain total control of the process, whether in methodology, modelling, scenarios or identification of the shortcomings of investment”, he said, while regretting that the other energy actors only have an advisory role.
For its part, the think tank E3G considers that the proposed enhanced role for ACER and the Commission is “a marginal improvement”. The organisation regrets that the Commission has not proposed to base EU energy infrastructure priorities and decisions on independent technical expertise, rather than on “vested interests”.
Sustainability
ACER and CEER, on the other hand, welcomed the Commission’s efforts to put more emphasis on sustainability and offshore renewable energies, including the extension of the scope of projects of common interest (PCIs) to include hydrogen and electrolysers.
This is, according to them, a “major step towards the European Green Deal”, an analysis not shared by the environmental NGOs Food and Water Action Europe, Friends of the Earth Europe or E3G.
Not convinced by Ms Simson’s assurances that the revised provisions do not support natural gas in a roundabout way (see EUROPE 12623/3), these organisations felt that the institution’s proposal creates a back door for natural gas to remain eligible for other titles, such as hydrogen networks or smart gas networks.
For Elisa Giannelli, policy advisor at E3G, “the European Commission’s proposal fails its first test in aligning energy policy with the European Green Deal”, despite an improvement to integrate the principle of ‘energy efficiency first’ throughout the planning and project evaluation process.
Finally, Hydrogen Europe enthusiastically welcomed the proposed revision. According to this organisation, this proposal represents a first step towards the realisation of the EU’s ambition to develop a hydrogen economy, as “the deployment of clean hydrogen at large scale is contingent on the availability of an appropriate infrastructure to transport hydrogen from its point of production to demand centres locally, regionally and internationally”.
See the proposed revision: https://bit.ly/3npV3Qs (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)