The European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) has formally agreed its position on the ongoing EU electricity market design revision, largely backing the European Commission’s proposal for a targeted reform.
The agreement allows for different routes to market for renewable electricity: contracts for difference, renewable PPAs, and merchant investments.The EU is currently debating a revised electricity market design against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and surging electricity prices across Europe.
The European Commission has proposed a targeted reform this March.
The reform aims to end the investment uncertainty in electricity markets and to accelerate the build-out of home-grown and competitive renewables.
WindEurope welcomed the European Parliament’s ITRE committee vote sticking to a targeted reform of the electricity market design, particularly voting against enshrining in law revenue caps for inframarginal generators of electricity.
This will help put an end to the patchwork of national market interventions, WindEurope said.
That’s good news to uphold the integrity of the wholesale power markets in Europe and will help unlock stalling investments in renewables, it added.WindEurope also said that preserving different routes to market like PPAs and contracts for difference was indispensable considering the huge volumes of investments that will be needed by 2030.The ITRE committee also supported the Transmission Access Guarantees (TAG) which will help de-risk investments in hybrid offshore wind farms.
This will clear the way for hybrid offshore wind farms – that have connections to one or more countries – to become a central building block of Europe’s offshore wind expansion, WindEurope said.
Hybrid offshore wind farms are key to building up a meshed and interconnected offshore wind grid which allows for more efficient energy flows and more coordinated approaches to grid planning, it added.