Sustainable Energy Law Notebook

The European Commission opened on 18 June 2013 a public consultation on the working methods and results achieved so far by the European Agency for the Cooperation of the Energy Regulator (ACER) , established in accordance with Regulation (EC) 713/2009 of 13 July 2009 . ACER was officially established in March 2011 and has its headquarters in Ljubljana, Slovenia . The background for the public consultation is further defined in the Commission's text for the public consultation: The Agency was established in order to fill in the regulatory gap, with the purpose to assist national regulatory authorities, and, if necessary to coordinate their actions, in order to enhance their cooperation at the EU level. ACER plays a central role in the development of EU-wide network and market rules with a view to create a single Internal Energy Market. It coordinates regional and cross-regional initiatives which favor market integration. The Agency monitors the work of European netw...

Statoil announced on 13 June 2013 that the company just concluded a 15-year contract for the supply of natural gas to the 600 MW combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant owned by Stadtwerke Düsseldorf , with delivery starting in 2016. Viewed from a Norwegian and supplier perspective, one innovation of this contract is the indexation of the gas price to spot gas market . This has become a more common practice in the UK (e.g., through Britain's National Balancing Point) and to a certain extend in The Netherlands, but not yet in the most majority of the gas supply contracts, as the European Commission would have wished and called upon. So Norway is following the trend. In that, " the agreement builds on the liberalising gas, power and emissions markets and the available market price indices ." In other words, " it represents a new type of partnership in the German gas-to-power market ". See press release from Statoil (13.06.2013). Another important aspec...

The conclusions of the Council meeting  (TTE configuration - Energy) on the European Commission's Communication on " Making the internal energy market work "  ( COM(0663) final ) have been released and are available here . Detailed analysis to be published shortly on this blog .