The Clean Energy Package - Updates
The “Clean Energy Package” is a set of laws and regulation in the field of environment and energy efficiency, which has been launched by the European Commission on 30 November 2016, encompassing several areas in which the European Union and its Member States shall reach an improvement within a 2018-2030 time frame, also considering the binding goals set forth in the Paris Agreement, in certain areas including energy performance in buildings and energy efficiency in general, further increase of the production of renewable energy, improvement of the internal market for electricity, both in terms of consumer protection and interconnection of the national power networks; further empowering of the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER).
In this respect, the legislative procedure involving the approval of the measures included in the package (four directives, three regulations and in total), is eventually coming to an end.In fact, on last December the different EU legislative entities involved in the EU legislative procedure reached a final agreement on the last four measures to be formally approved, and namely:
a) a directive and a regulation on the design of the internal electricity market, involving, inter alia, the phase-out of subsidies for power plants emitting more than 550gr CO2/kWh; the promotion and enhancement of cross-boarder power transmission; and empowering the position of final consumers (including the introduction of new price comparison tools) and “prosumers” (i.e. a persons who both consume and produce electricity”);
b) a regulation focusing on how to secure the resilience of the electricity system of the Member States, with particular reference to their dependence on extra-EU energy exportes, and how to manage electricity crises when they occur, by ensuring that all Member States put in place the appropriate tools to prevent and manage these situations; and
c) a regulation granting more powers to the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), the agency entrusted with complementing and coordinating the work of national energy regulators at EU level, with particular reference to such areas where fragmented national decisions of cross-border relevance would lead to problems for the internal Energy Market.
Such measures will be formally adopted by the Parliament and the Council of the European Union in the coming months (probably in March) and then published in the Official Journal, thus completing the legislative procedure involving the Clean Energy Package.
Source and further updates on: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/topics/energy-strategy-and-energy-union/clean-energy-all-europeans
by Lorenzo Pietro Spiller