5 April, Brussels – A group of industry associations have released a joint declaration, calling for the European Union to take action on delivering flexible power markets, making best use of distributed supply and demand options. The signatories include representatives from the renewables industry (EWEA and SolarPower Europe), the Smart Energy Demand Coalition, and the European Paper and Pulp Association, amongst others.
The declaration argues that market-driven environments are the best means to provide long-term investment signals, and that the completion of the Internal Energy market will improve system adequacy and efficiency, increase security of supply and support the competitiveness of European industry.
However, the current energy market remains tailored to centralised energy production, to the detriment of cross-border energy flows, deployment of renewables, energy storage and demand-side flexibility. The Declaration calls for three major reforms:
- Providing adequate price signals and further integration of short-markets across borders;
- Ensuring a balanced approach to system adequacy that fully takes into account the contribution from the different energy sources;
- Implementing a level playing field for all flexibility providers to foster the pan-European trading of electricity and grid support services.
For more information, see the Joint Declaration, ‘2016, time to deliver…an ambitious power market reform.’