March brings a spring in the step of CEER with Andrew Ebrill taking up his new role as CEER’s Secretary General.
The feature article is on CEER’s newly released report on investment conditions in electricity and gas networks across Europe.
Registration is open for the joint CEER-FSR "Introduction to Fundamentals of Energy Regulation" training course (see the training section below).
CEER is co-hosting a number of exciting (closed) events in April including the Eastern Partnership workshop in Vilnius, a security of supply workshop with the IEA in Paris, and the EU-US regulatory roundtable in Madrid.
We also bring you a special collection of Women In Energy stories launched by regulators
to celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March (see the international section below).
Feature: CEER report on investment conditions in energy networks in Europe
Why is network investment important? Europe needs efficient and interconnected energy infrastructure to meet its energy and climate goals. The European Commission has estimated that around €200 billion is needed, during the current decade, for transmission grids and gas pipelines.
How is energy regulation and investment linked? National regulatory authorities (NRAs) play an important role in overseeing the monopoly (electricity and gas) networks and market developments. NRAs scrutinise the network companies’ costs and investments. Regulators help create a sound and predictable regulatory environment which is important for an adequate flow of the new investments needed to develop secure, competitive and sustainable energy infrastructure and markets.
What are investment conditions? Investors base their decisions on a wide range of important factors. The investment conditions indicate the return for the employed capital for the investments. Investment conditions include depreciation, interest rates and tax considerations. Predictable independent regulation also helps to reduce regulatory and legal risks for investors, and hence lowers the cost of capital.
What’s in CEER’s investment conditions report? This CEER report analyses the conditions for investments in electricity and gas networks in individual EU Member States and Norway. Packed with data, it provides a general overview of the regulatory regimes, the required efficiency developments and analyses the overall determination of capital costs.
The report underlines the importance of recognizing the overall investment conditions. The individual parameters presented in this study, such as the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), have to be interpreted in the context of a whole country-specific.
