The latest 10-year plans for the development of the European Union’s energy network (TYNDPs) proposed by the gas (ENTSO-G) and electricity (ENTSO-E) transmission system operators contain “serious shortcomings”, according to the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) in three non-binding opinions issued on Monday 3 May.
Published every two years, the TYNDPs aim to outline how to develop Europe’s gas and electricity networks over a 10-year horizon, assessing and identifying the need for new energy infrastructure projects.
Their development is therefore a real challenge since only projects included in the TYNDPs will be able to claim the status of ‘project of common interest’ (PCI) provided for in the Trans-European Energy Networks (TEN-E) Regulation (347/2013) and thus become eligible for EU financial support.
However, according to ACER, “the 2020 plans for electricity and gas (...) do not sufficiently contribute to market efficiency due to several shortcomings”.
In particular, the regulators believe that network operators are proposing “too many conventional gas projects”. These amount to nearly 75 billion euros, and less than half of them have been evaluated by ENTSOG, ACER says, while deploring the low evaluation of the contribution of gas projects to sustainability.
The Agency also calls for improvements to the “core building blocks” of TYNDPs, such as network development scenarios, identification of infrastructure needs and cost-benefit analysis (CBA), as well as for strengthening the independent assessment of projects in the context of the ongoing revision of the TEN-E Regulation.
The regulators also added that: “There are also shortcomings in the public consultations on key elements of the methodologies for the assessment of the energy projects being proposed by network operators.
Reiterating their concern about the risk of a lack of neutrality of ENTSOs (see EUROPE 12672/15), the regulators underlined the need for fundamental changes in the governance of TEN-E in order to avoid conflicts of interest while ensuring transparency.
See the ACER opinions: https://bit.ly/3vOCYzD ; https://bit.ly/3eVBhcH ; https://bit.ly/3ekQHYN (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)