On Monday 20 December, the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) published joint recommendations for the regulation of hydrogen markets.
As a first step, they emphasised the need to establish key hydrogen regulatory principles at an early stage through the European Commission’s hydrogen and “decarbonised gases” legislative package (see EUROPE 12854/11) that was presented last week as a way to reduce investor uncertainty and ensure consumer protection.
In particular, they recommend maintaining the European model for energy markets by promoting open, competitive and non-discriminatory competition conditions for future renewable and low-carbon hydrogen markets, with there being a clear distinction between market-based activities (production/supply) and natural monopolies (transmission/distribution).
The regulators are recommending that, subject to the approval of the national regulator, gas network operators should also be allowed to become hydrogen network operators provided that they keep separate financial accounts for the infrastructures and the activities linked to gas and hydrogen.
Regarding third party access, the regulators recommended that Member States should decide on the type of access and its non-discriminatory implementation for hydrogen infrastructure.
These core principles could, in some respects, include minimum requirements for Member States, say the regulators.
However, they have advised a “gradual and flexible regulatory approach” to the hydrogen sector, as “we do not know how the hydrogen sector will evolve in terms of consumption, production and, consequently, network infrastructure”.
He added: “the regulation of the hydrogen sector will need to enable a sufficient level of flexibility and subsidiarity to allow innovation to take place and to consider the heterogeneity of the current energy mixes across Europe”.
They also recommended that the development of the hydrogen sector was periodically monitored by national regulatory authorities in order to identify possible requirements for adapting the regulatory framework.
See the recommendations of the regulators: https://bit.ly/328sO3D (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)