Single EU power market plan for 2014 to be delayed

On Oct 26, 2012

The European Union’s 2014 target for creating a common power market faces delay as some countries have yet to reform relevant rules, according to Capacity Allocation Service Company, which handles transmission capacity in much of the EU.
The EU wants to achieve a single, liberalized electricity market by 2014 to even out prices and safeguard security of supply.
But CASC says that there are delays across Europe in implementing the necessary regulation.
“Italy, for example, still has to change its market rules to go ahead with the coupling, and who knows when this can happen. So the 2014 target might turn out to be slightly too ambitious,” Corne Meeuwis, CASC’s chief executive for the central western Europe (CWE) market region said during a conference in Oslo.
The EU has separated Europe into seven market regions (Central Western, Northern, UK & Ireland, Central-South, South-West, Central East and Baltic) which it plans to merge into one pan-European market through aligning regulation and trading as well as expanding cross-border power trading.
“We are already half a year late in implementing market coupling in the north western Europe (NWE) market region,” Meeuwis said.
A key interim step toward unifying the whole region was to have NWE market coupling bringing together the Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway, Central Western Europe (CWE) as well as the UK by the end of 2012.New plans call for achieving this by the second quarter of 2013, which Meeuwis said was on track.
CASC-CWE handles the auctioning of power shipping capacity on the borders between Germany, France and the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).