The European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) published on Friday 5 March a joint paper setting out their suggestions on the proposed revision of the Regulation (347/2013) on Trans-European Energy Networks (TEN-E).
According to the regulators, the European Commission’s proposal presented on 15 December (see EUROPE 12623/3) “should be further improved to promote a neutral and independent technical assessment of infrastructure projects, to ensure those projects bringing most benefits for the European Green Deal are supported and to avoid any risks of unjustified costs to European consumers”.
ACER and CEER are particularly concerned about the lack of clarity with regard to gas-related infrastructure (hydrogen, smart gas networks, electrolysers) and consider that the indicators for the three categories could be improved.
In their view, the definition of the smart grids category “shall be specified and its relevance demonstrated”.
They continue, “The objectives of smart grids and electrolysers should be set more clearly, i.e., enable flexibility services such as demand response and storage, beyond sector integration”.
The two organisations also point out that the infrastructure development scenarios are currently being developed by the ‘European Networks of Transmission System Operators’ (ENTSOs), which “can be perceived as biased towards favouring more infrastructure, as this is in the interest of their business”.
However, the process provided for in the proposed revision to ensure neutrality in the development of the scenarios risks being “lengthy and inefficient”, say the regulators, while wishing to be more involved.
They also call for the integration of the planning of the offshore infrastructure network into the planning of the European network.
See regulators’ recommendations: https://bit.ly/3c3kP8W (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)