EURELECTRIC’s Annual Convention and Conference in Berlin – “The Consumer-Powered Energy Transition” with 400 registered participants, presented two days of interesting discussion on the energy system of the future and the changes this implies for business strategies.
A day earlier EURELECTRIC’s Board of Directors had appointed a new Presidential team to steer the industry association over the next two years. The incoming EURELECTRIC President, Antonio Mexia, CEO of EDP will be accompanied by two Vice Presidents - on equal status - Alistair Phillips-Davies, Chief Executive of SSE and Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman and CEO of EDF. They will be supported in their activities by long-standing Secretary General Hans ten Berge.
Opening the conference, outgoing EURELECTRIC President, Johannes Teyssen, CEO of E.ON recalled the milestones of his Presidency, dwelling on some of the high profile work undertaken by the association, the most recent being the “downstream market” project. “The time to craft a long-term energy and climate policy, responding to the needs of our customers is now,” said Mr. Teyssen. “Companies that want to shape the energy future must make clear decisions. This also applies to policymakers,” he said.
In his keynote speech, Miguel Arias Cañete, European Commissioner for Climate Action & Energy, recognised that the power sector is going through “one of the most profound changes in history”. New business models are arising and the stakeholders’ ability to adapt will determine success or failure. The Commissioner pointed to three main objectives that the Internal Electricity Market must achieve: become the main driver for investments in the power sector; accommodate and drive the development of renewables; and adjust to increasing customer participation. In conclusion, he welcomed the cooperation with EURELECTRIC, saying “we cannot achieve anything without working hand-in-hand with the industry”.
Opening the second day of the EURELECTRIC Annual Convention in Berlin, incoming EURELECTRIC President, António Mexia, delivered a keynote speech outlining five strategic priorities to guide the industry association during his term in office (2015-2017). These broad priorities establish a clear strategy for EURELECTRIC’s work over the coming years while also ensuring that EURELECTRIC provides proactive, coherent and effective input to topical debates at national, European and international level.
“We need to stand united as a sector and we must show that we are all here together to meet our customers’ needs”, said Mr Mexia, underlining the rapid changes in the energy system. He stressed that the energy system of tomorrow will look very different from what we are used to today, with a profound impact on customers. Retail markets are headed towards greater complexity as new opportunities and needs emerge. Today we witness an evolving market with new players, game-changing technologies, new types of services, etc., he continued.
In order to effectively address the new challenges the power sector is confronted with, firm and concrete action is required, said Mr Mexia. In this context he noted five priority action streams that the transition to tomorrow’s energy world raises:
Revealing the value of electricity as the key driver for a decarbonised, competitive and energy independent Europe: Mr Mexia emphasised the need to make “an additional effort” to draw attention to the potential value that still lies untapped in our industry. Electrification is a “key vehicle” in the decarbonisation process and areas like mobility and heating and cooling can largely benefit from the value that our industry has to offer in this regard.
Achieving the Internal Energy Market under a revised market design to attract the needed investment: The completion of the internal energy market remains a “no regrets option”. The cornerstone to all market developments is the full execution of an integrated European energy market, i.e. the completion of the IEM.
Developing a pragmatic framework to pursue the decarbonisation agenda: The EU ETS must remain the principal instrument to achieve the EU’s emission reduction objectives. Sustainable RES development and strong energy efficiency ambitions are a must too, together with an effective, pan-European governance framework, in order to steer the direction towards the 2020 and 2030 targets.
Reinforcing the focus on retail, anticipating the needs of empowered customers: The growing importance of distributed generation, demand side management and distributed storage are all ways in which customers can actively engage with the power sector in customising energy solutions that best fit their needs. EURELECTRIC must continue to position itself on the developing downstream market.
Highlighting the increasingly active role of DSOs as technological enablers and market facilitators: the increasing importance of DSOs as active system managers implies that further work on the exact definition of their role is needed. EURELECTRIC has a key role to play in ensuring that they are not only technological enablers but play an active role as neutral market facilitators as well.
Finally, Mr Mexia reiterated the industry’s call to policymakers to make the consumer-powered energy transition work. The industry’s “wish list” here includes fair competition to develop and restore confidence in markets and a regulatory framework that rewards simple, cost-effective and fair solutions for customers.
The second day of the conference commenced with analytical panel discussions on various scenarios on the changing energy business: wholesale markets and new customer solutions; grid responses to distributed energy; and new trends in distributed generation and storage. The conclusions served as “food for thought” for the executive panel which looked into the main challenges, obstacles, risks and opportunities of a future customer-centric world.
Next year's Annual Convention will take place in Vilnius on 6-7 June 2016.