The Legal Integration Of Energy Markets

By mixing legal, political and economic perspectives, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers from academia in law, economics and political science, regulatory and competition authorities, as well as legal and consulting practices and business

This book fills a gap in the existing literature by dealing with several issues linked to long-term contracts and the efficiency of electricity markets. These include the impact of long-term contracts and vertical integration on effective competition, generation investment in risky markets, and the challenges for competition policy principles. On the one hand, long-term contracts may contribute to lasting generation capability by allowing for a more efficient allocation of risk. On the other hand, they can create conditions for imperfect competition and thus impair short-term efficiency. The contributors – prominent academics and policy experts with inter-disciplinary perspectives – develop fresh theoretical and practical insights on this important concern for current electricity markets. This highly accessible book will strongly appeal to both academic and professional audiences including scholars of industrial, organizational and public sector economics, and competition and antitrust law. It will also be of value to regulatory and antitrust authorities, governmental policymakers, and consultants in electricity law and economics.

This book presents the first in-depth analysis of the export of the EU electricity acquis, through the imposition of an EU-type regional electricity market (REM) in SEE within the enlargement process. Among other germane issues, the author discusses the following: the suitability of the European model of electricity markets’ liberalization for economies in transition; the use of the Public Services Obligations (PSO) to address the impact of electricity markets liberalization; the use of regulated prices and measures for granting priority rights for cross-border capacity allocation as PSOs; the Court of Justice judgement in Federutility on the sustainability of states’ protection of their different types of customers, including the large businesses; the Energy Community as a step towards a Pan-European Energy Community; the effect of simultaneous national electricity markets liberalization and cross-border regional integration of national electricity markets; and, the interplay between liberalization policy and reforms and the regulatory tools available to address their impact on provision of public services. The author’s proposed rethinking of the public services obligation offers new views on using this tool more effectively and proposes possibilities for its practical implementation through measures such as energy efficiency, allocation of interconnectors’ capacity, transparency, addressing the affordability issue and the protection of vulnerable customers. The book is remarkable for its clear analysis of the policy lessons arising from the export of the idea of liberalized energy markets, and will be welcomed by practitioners, officials, academics and others in energy law and policy for its informative and forward-looking overview of the national and cross-border reforms in the Energy Community framework.

Recent years have seen a major growth in the European law concerning the operation of the energy industry, especially with respect to electricity and gas. Several directives have been adopted that are aimed at the promotion of competition in this key sector of the European economy. At thesame time, the jurisprudence of the European Court had developed further on matters such as access to networks, import and export monopolies and security of supply.In this book the authors examine the principal legislation, Treaty provisions and decisions of the Court of Justice and Court of First Instance of the EU as they related to the promotion of competition in European energy markets. In particular, two chapters are devoted to a detailed analysis of theprovisions of the two directives that set out common rules for the creation of an internal market in the electricity and gas sectors. In each case, the analysis is set in the context of the various programmes of energy market liberalization and privatization in the Member States, which aresummarized in this book. However, the authors also take the wider pan-European context into account, explaining the requirements and the implications of the European Economic Area Agreement, the Energy Charter Treaty and the Europe Agreements with countries of Central and Eastern Europe.The approach adopted by the authors is both analytical and historical. They locate the legislation in the context of the EU Internal Market programme that began in the late 1980s and explain the roles played by the various parties (energy industries, consumers and EU institutions) in shaping thefinal legislation. Importantly, they explain how the framework character of the energy directives has led to further important rule-making in the implementation of the directives across the EU. They conclude that a co-ordinated response between the European Commission and the national regulatorswill be essential to resolve problems arising in the transition to a competitive energy market in the EU.

In the course of energy liberalisation, electricity and natural gas contracts have been separated from physical delivery, and these contracts are now traded as commodities in multilateral trading facilities. Although designed to render energy trading standardised and efficient, this system raises serious questions as to whether existing regulatory and antitrust provisions are sufficient to address market abuses that cause imbalances in demand and supply. The European Union’s (EU’s) Regulation on Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency (REMIT), adopted to combat such market manipulation, is still lacking in significant case law to bolster its effectiveness. Addressing this gap, this invaluable book provides the first in-depth analysis of market manipulation in the energy sector, offering a deeply informed understanding of the new anti-manipulation rules and their implementation and enforcement. Focusing on practices that perpetrators employ to manipulate electricity and natural gas markets and the applicability of anti-manipulation rules to combat such practices, the analysis examines such issues and topics as the following: – factors and circumstances that determine when and what market misconduct can be subject to enforcement; – the European Commission’s criteria to determine whether a particular market is susceptible to regulation; – jurisdiction of REMIT and the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) with respect to the prohibitions of insider trading in financial wholesale energy markets; – to what extent anti-manipulation rules and EU competition law may be applied concurrently; and – types of physical and financial instruments that market participants have employed in devising their manipulative schemes. Because market manipulation is rather new in the EU context but has been prohibited and prosecuted under US law for over a century, much of the case law analysis is from the United States and greatly clarifies how anti-manipulation rules may be enforced. A concluding chapter offers policy recommendations to mitigate legal uncertainties arising from REMIT. Energy market participants, such as energy producers, wholesale suppliers, traders, transmission system operators and their counsel, and legal practitioners in the field will welcome this book’s extensive legal analysis and its clear demarcation of the objectives that REMIT seeks to accomplish with respect to energy market liberalisation.

Bridging theory and practice, this book offers insights into how Europe has experienced the evolution of modern electricity markets from the end of the 1990s to the present day. It explores defining moments in the process, including the four waves of European legislative packages, landmark court cases, and the impact of climate strikes and marches.