Climate change and the onset of events linked to extreme climatic weather may prompt the next global crisis. In a post-COVID context, this emphasizes the need to properly address emerging transnational environmental challenges and, at the same time, operate speedy energy transitions.

Against this backdrop, the Conference focuses on the varieties of legal responses to global environmental problems and their impact on justice. As the climate, energy, and environmental justice, we understand that it refers to the concerns regarding the redistributive, restorative, and procedural issues raised by the challenges of making a transition to a more sustainable environment and how legal systems responded to it, whether from International law, EU law, or a multi legal system perspective described as Global law.

The 7th International Conference co-organised by Florence School of Regulation and the University of Portsmouth is hosting several legal and economics scholars who submitted abstracts and got acceptance to present their papers on Climate, Energy, and Environmental Justices, as well as Wildlife Crime, Blue Governance and Biopiracy.

Organising Committee

Prof. dr. Belen Olmos Giupponi (University of Portsmouth),

Prof. dr. Lucila de Almeida (Florence School of Regulation and NOVA School of Law),

Dr Caroline Cox (University of Portsmouth) and

Dr Penny Giosa (University of Portsmouth)

Keynotes

Justice Suzanne Kingston, Court of Justice of the European Union (tbc)

Dr. Anna Sobczak, European Commission

Prof. Raphael Heffron, Universite de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour

Dr. Nick Pamment, University of Portsmouth

Online attendance is open to all upon registration.

The FSR is hosting an academic workshop regarding the most recent insights and research on the design of electricity tariffs.

The main outcomes of the workshop will be summarized in a policy brief.

Background

The energy transition and the electrification of the heating and transport sectors will require the more active participation of the demand side to balance fluctuating renewable energy supply with demand and reduce the need for grid expansion. In addition, the energy crisis has revealed important shortcomings in the current design of electricity tariffs. Customers paying real-time prices have experienced excessive bill increases that led to regulatory interventions in the form of compensations. Customers on fixed-price contracts, on the other hand, had insufficient incentives to reduce their load.

Future-proof electricity tariffs should provide a solution to all these challenges. They should protect customers from excessive price peaks but still retain incentives for demand response and enable customers to specify the amount of flexibility that they are able to provide and ensure that this flexibility is used optimally. In addition, the regulation for retailers needs to be revised, to enable competition without undermining the incentives to hedge against increasingly volatile prices.

The FSR workshop on Future Electricity tariffs aims to bring together the most recent research and insights on the appropriate design of electricity tariffs. The main outcomes of the workshop will be summarised in a policy brief.

Authors participating in the workshop may also submit their article to an associated special issue in Energy Policy. However, participation in the workshop and the special issue are independent of each other.

Deadline for abstract submission: May 31, 2023

Confirmation of presentation: June 15, 2023

The EU has the most developed natural gas network in the world. It constitutes more than 200000 km of transmission pipelines, over 2 million km of distribution networks, and more than 20000 compressor and pressure reduction stations. The value of the total infrastructure investments is at least 250 billion Euro. 40% of households are connected to the gas network. In short, the EU gas network is capable of transporting and storing large quantities of energy and is well connected to the final consumers.

The EU has committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050. To meet this objective it is intended to strongly reduce natural gas consumption, and based on Commission modeling this may already reduce gas demand by 25% by 2030, progressively shifting to use renewable and low-carbon hydrogen and biomethane.

At the same time the Commission is giving increasing importance to the rapid development of a CCS grid and storage, scheduling a CCS Strategy for later this year and proposing a EU 50 MT target for CO2 storage by 2030 as well as legal obligations on oil and gas companies to invest by this date.

Whilst the future hydrogen grids and CO2 network will be made up of a mix of new and old pipes, repurposing significant part of the existing gas grid will obviously play a major role.

The European gas networks will require major adaptations to meet this energy transition. And this adaptation should be done in full conformity with continuing safety of supply and minimal costs.

Against this background, National Regulatory Authorities will need to take decisions on the repurposing, de-commissioning, replacement, and extended use of individual existing EU’s gas systems assets. To do this in a consistent and wise way is a considerable challenge.

The FSR Policy debate will reflect on current knowledge and future challenges, asking whether the framework currently being finalized will deliver, and asking what is next and what still needs to be done.

Structure

Introduction   Andris Piebalgs | FSR

Presentation of the DNV Study “Future regulatory decisions on natural gas networks: repurposing, decommissioning and reinvestments” Dr. Konstantin Petrov | DNV

Discussion

Christopher Jones | FSR

Walter Boltz |

Sara Piskor | ENTSOG

Q&A with the audience

Conclusions  Andris Piebalgs | FSR

A decade ago, you knew that electricity distribution was changing because of new words popping up, such as ‘smart grids’ and ‘smart meters’. We invite you to forget what you knew, a few changes, and acknowledge what you do not know yet: several revolutions.

Do you remember the telecom industry disappearing under the push of the Internet ecosystem? You are getting closer to the coming disruption. In China, they already use the wording “Electricity Internet” meaning a digital revolution, a decentralization revolution, in a multi-layer electricity system with prosumers, peer-to-peer, flexsumers, aggregators, and local markets.

How are distribution grids really transforming, in technologies, usages, roles, tools, business models, and regulations? What has already come true? What is still only a dream? Where are the pioneers, the followers, the reactionaries?

We will discuss all that from the book “Electricity Networks in the Decentralization Era. Rethinking Economics & Regulation” (Palgrave, 2022), by R. Poudineh, C. Brandstätt, F. Billimoria.

The Host of the series, Jean-Michel Glachant loved that book and made an enthusiastic review of it for the journal “Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy”(EEEP). The authors, Christine Brandstätt and Fahrad Billimoria will join the event to share the key messages of their book.

The discussion will follow with Tim Schittekatte, an expert in distribution economics and regulation, formerly FSR and today working at MIT; and Jean-Michel Glachant, who pictures himself as “an old horse having seen the take-off of centralized wholesale electricity trade in the past century, and now amazed that electricity decentralized affairs are taking off today in front of my eyes”.

FSR Climate is delighted to announce its first international conference on Ex-Post Evaluation of Emission Trading to be held online on Tuesday 20 June 2023. The conference is organised under the framework of the project LIFE COASE – Collaborative Observatory for ASsessment of the EU ETS.  

With the global race to net zero greenhouse gas emissions, the EU is committed to sharing its experience with the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) and learning from other jurisdictions. LIFE COASE was created in response to the growing need for assessing the performance of ETSs and strengthening international cooperation on emissions trading. The project aims to support EU and national policymakers in the implementation and development of the EU ETS, including its integration with other carbon markets. It will establish the first observatory for the EU ETS assessment by providing new data and tools for ETS monitoring. 

In this context, the EUI will host its first academic conference in the series on 20 June 2023. The conference aims to identify the latest policy-relevant studies on ex-post assessments of emissions trading. Among the main topics, carbon leakage, competitiveness, and distributional effects of the EU and other major ETSs are of particular interest for this edition. The conference will provide an opportunity for researchers to present and discuss their research with fellow academics, stakeholders, experts, and policymakers. In addition to the academic sessions, the Conference will also comprise a Keynote Lecture and a Policy Roundtable. 

Registration for the online event is possible here. 

Draft Programme: 

09:30-09:35 Welcome 

09:35-10:25 Keynote Lecture “The distributional impacts of market-based climate policy: State of knowledge and future directions for research”

• Jan Steckel, MCC Berlin [Presentation]

Coffee break

10:35-12:55 Session “Competitiveness and Carbon Leakage”

• Huajin Wang (Renmin University of China) – Heterogeneous Responses to Carbon Pricing: Firm-level Evidence from Beijing Emissions Trading Scheme [Abstract] [Presentation]
• Leon Bremer (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) – Competitiveness and investments under emissions trading [Abstract] [Presentation]
• Aliénor Cameron (Université Paris-Nanterre & EconomiX-CNRS) – Is industrial decarbonization at odds with competitiveness? An assessment of competition dynamics in two EU heavy industries [Abstract] [Presentation]
• Johanna Arlinghaus (MCC Berlin) – Carbon pricing and credit reallocation [Abstract] [Presentation]

Lunch break

13:45-15:00 Policy Roundtable “Carbon leakage: (how) can we effectively prevent that risk?”

• Arjan Trinks, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis [Presentation]
• Theresa Wildgrube, Adelphi [Presentation]
• Aude Pommeret, Université Savoie Mont Blanc [Presentation]
• Wilfred Feng, Dentons [Presentation]

Coffee break

15:10-17:30 Session “Social impacts and acceptability of emission trading”

• Adrien Fabre(CIRED) – International Attitudes Toward Global Policies [Abstract] [Presentation]
• Franziska Funke (PIK Climate/TU Berlin) – Prices vs. Quantities from a Citizen’s Perspective: Does the European Public Perceive Carbon Taxes and ETS differently? [Abstract] [Presentation]
• Marianna Sobkiewicz & Krzysztof Kobyłka (WiseEuropa) – Evaluation of the impact of the EU ETS revenues and derogation under Article 10c on investment and infrastructure in Poland [Abstract] [Presentation]
• Ghassane Benmir (London School of Economics) – Weitzman Meets Taylor: ETS Futures Drivers and Carbon Cap Rules [Abstract] [Presentation]

17:30-17:35 Conclusions

Call for papers (closed):

The committee welcomes economic and interdisciplinary research from various perspectives and topics on Ex-Post Evaluations of Emissions Trading. This year, we warmly invite the submission of papers focusing on: 

• The distributional impacts of carbon pricing;
• Social acceptability of ETSs;
• Carbon leakage and international competitiveness;
• Carbon border adjustment mechanisms.

Submission Guidelines:

Papers should be submitted by 23 April 2023 to LIFECOASE@eui.eu. 

For any questions related to the International Conference on Ex-Post Evaluation of Emission Trading, please contact LIFECOASE@eui.eu.

Important Dates: 

• Submission Deadline: 23 April 2023
• Notification of Acceptance: 15 May 2023
• Conference Date: 20 June 2023 (online)

The conference is organised with the support of EAERE.

LIFE COASE is a project of the European University Institute co-financed by the EU LIFE Programme of the European Commission. 

Speakers:

The Lights on Women initiative at the Florence School of Regulation, in collaboration with partner Landwärme, is proud to launch the LUCE Awards, which will be held in Florence on May 16, 2023.

The awards

As key policies such as the Green Deal are set out worldwide to facilitate the transition towards carbon neutrality, they also might serve as a catalyst to move towards gender equality, empowerment and justice.

In this context, the LUCE Awards are meant to further the just transition’s gender mainstreaming objectives while highlighting the contributions and achievements of women of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds working in energy, climate and sustainability.

Awarding ceremony and prizes

The LUCE Awards will give two prizes under the categories:

• Emerging Talent: this category will recognize up-and-coming female academics, entrepreneurs, founders (also of non-registered projects), and young leaders of civil society who are working to advance the Green Transitions agenda worldwide.
• Legacy Women: this category will honour the achievements of senior female professionals who have successfully used their platforms and voices to push forward the energy, climate, and sustainability sectors. More info can be found here.

The awarding ceremony will be held in Florence on 16 May 2023. The two winners will receive one free seat in an FSR course and will be invited to attend the awarding ceremony.

More information about the LUCE Awards can be found on the Lights on Women platform.

The LUCE Awards are organised by the Florence School of Regulation and partner Landwärme under the Lights on Women initiative.

This episode of #FSRDebates will consider which role Contracts for Difference could play in the future market design and how they can be designed to ensure the active participation of contracted resources in the short-term markets.

Background

The current electricity market design in the EU, reflecting the Electricity Target Model (ETM) developed in the late 2000’s and enshrined in the Third Energy Legislative Package, focuses on short-term markets to deliver an efficient market outcome in the short term and resource adequacy in the long term. In the forward timeframe, the aim of the ETM and of legislation has been more on the instruments to allocate the available cross-zonal interconnection capacity. It was in fact considered that short-term markets provide the necessary price signals to promote investments in the resources required to guarantee adequacy. In fact, the current legislation prescribes strict rules for the implementation of Capacity Remuneration Mechanism.

Other long-term instruments have been neglected by EU legislation. No provisions have been introduced to support the liquidity of long-term electricity (forward or futures) markets, with the results that liquidity of the markets for these instruments is limited to horizons of up to one year and only in a few jurisdictions, and it has been decreasing over the last year. Contracts for Difference (CfDs) have been used in some countries for supporting the development of renewable-based generation, but again there was no effort to harmonise their use.

However, the increasing penetration of variable renewable energy (VRE) sources in the electricity system is leading to more volatile prices, with the likely prospect of more frequent instances of low prices accompanied by infrequent price spikes, already brought the policy and regulatory debate to reconsider the role of long-term instruments and markets. The recent developments in the electricity markets, exacerbated by the impact on energy markets of the war of aggression in Ukraine, with much higher and more volatile prices than in the past years, apart from creating more risk for investors and market participants in the electricity sector, has created additional attention to the issue of whether the current market design should be complemented by other instruments, addressing the longer-term timeframe and supporting resource adequacy.

A much wider role of CfDs is now being considered. The challenge is to ensure that their design does not weaken the incentives for the contracted resources actively to participate in the short-term markets.

Introduction to the Debate and Opening Presentations

14.00 – 14.05   Introduction to the Debate

Alberto Pototschnig | Florence School of Regulation

14.05 – 14.15   The policy perspective

Paula Ceballos Coloma | Policy Officer, Internal Energy Market, DG ENER, European Commission

14.15 – 14.25   The role and design of Contracts for Difference: an academic perspective

Lena Kitzing | Head of Section, Wind and Energy Systems, DTU

Panel Discussion: Introductory Remarks, Polls, and Comments

Moderator: Ilaria Conti | Florence School of Regulation

14.25 – 14.50   Introductory remarks from the panellists

Juan José Alba Rios | Issue manager of market design, Eurelectric
Peter Claes | Vice-President, IFIEC
Clara Poletti | Chair of the Board of Regulators, ACER

14.50 – 14.55   Polls

14.55 – 15.20   Comments on the polls outcome and Q&A from the audience
Panellists

15.20 – 15.30   Concluding remarks
Ilaria Conti | Florence School of Regulation
Alberto Pototschnig | Florence School of Regulation

The energy transition which the EU is undertaking to achieve its ambitious energy and climate targets – and in particular climate neutrality by 2050 – requires new activities and processes to be developed and deployed at scale. These developments will be assisted and made possible by the rapid advances in technologies, including digitalisation.

The current regulatory framework for the energy sector, which was designed with reference to existing technologies and processes, might not be sufficiently conducive to these new developments and therefore a number of regulators have embarked on regulatory experimentation through the use of ‘regulatory sandboxes’.

The Workshop will aim to review the existing experience with regulatory sandboxes in the energy sector and beyond and to see what lessons could be learned and in which areas, going forward in the energy transition, they could play a useful role.

For this purpose, the Workshop, after an opening part, will be divided into two Sessions:

• Session I, in the morning, will focus on reviewing the existing experience with regulatory sandboxes and identifying the main lessons emerging from this experience;
• Session II, in the afternoon, will aim at discussing which role regulatory sandboxes could play in the energy transition process going forward.

Please note that this event is by invitation only.

Sustainability assessment

The FSR assesses the sustainability and carbon footprint of all its Workshops of the Regulatory Policy Workshop Series. This Workshop is run according to a hybrid format, allowing participants to join it in presence in Florence or through internet-based remote connection. It is expected that most participants will participate in the Workshop through remote connection, while a few of them, who particularly value personal interaction, will join the Workshop in Florence. Therefore, there will be limited travel involved compared to a fully presential event. Those participants joining the event in Florence will be encouraged to offset any carbon emissions related to their air travel. It is considered that, in this way, a suitable balance is achieved between the effectiveness of the policy dialogue and the net carbon footprint of the event.

In this episode of FSR debates, we will look at a new tool designed by the UNEP International Methane Emissions Observatory for addressing climate warming.

Background

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for over one-quarter of the climate warming we are experiencing today.

While emissions associated with fossil fuel sector have the greatest potential for cost-effective mitigation, global methane emissions from the energy sector continued to increase reaching 135 million tonnes in 2022, according to the 2023 edition of the flagship International Energy Agency’s (IEA) publication – Global Methane Tracker. The single largest methane release into the atmosphere by explosion of the Nord Stream pipeline last year is what normal oil and gas operations around the world release every single day. Timely detection and reduction of large emission sources is one of the most cost-effective methane reduction strategies.

To this objective the UNEP International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) designed the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) – the first global system that connects satellite methane detection to transparent notification process that promote on-the-ground emissions mitigation efforts. MARS harnesses state-of-the-art satellite data to identify major emissions events, activate its partners to notify relevant stakeholders, and support and track progress towards mitigation. Current satellite technology allows MARS to now tackle the largest emission sources, responsible for around 10% of emissions. As the technology quickly improves, the system will integrate additional data from the rapidly expanding system of methane-detecting satellites to include lower-emitting and area sources and more frequent detection. This will allow MARS to expand the system into the agricultural and waste sectors in the future.

Agenda

Opening remarks

Christopher Jones, Florence School of Regulation

UNEP International Methane Emission Observatory (IMEO) and analysis of the methane release at Nord Stream incident

Andreea Calcan, UNEP

Satellite Data and the Methane Alert and Response System

Cynthia Randles, UNEP

From data to action

K.C. Michaels, IEA

Q&A Moderated by James Kneebone, Florence School of Regulation

Closing Remarks

Tibor Stelbaczky, EEAS

In this episode of the FSR Talks series, we will look at energy transition and the global south.

McKinsey estimates an investment requirement of $275 trillion between 2021-2050. Stanford places the broader cost of-addressing climate change at $400 trillion over the same 30-year period.  These outlays are manageable, given the 2022 Global GDP of $104 trillion and its history of doubling every 25 years post-1970.

The issue, however, is that the bottom half of the World, with a combined share of about 10% of the Global GNI and GDP, is required to carry a disproportionate burden of the cost of transition relative to their financial and technical capacity and responsibility.

Given high debt burdens, relatively higher cost of capital, limited domestic surpluses, and multiple demands on these limited resources; the bottom half of the world will be unable to deliver the proposed energy transition. 

Funds spent annually on fossil fuels by the world’s bottom half offer a possible solution for meeting the funding shortfall.  However, this solution requires unprecedented levels of bridge finance, with concessional IDA type terms, under innovative funding structures, wherein private capital from global capital markets will take out the bridge finance after 8-10 years.

The question is: will the rich half of the world, which currently provides limited levels of IDA funding, bite the bullet?

Host: Jean-Michel Glachant

Speaker: Surya Sethi, FSR Global Advisor

Discussants:

Miguel Vazquez, FSR Advisor

Kavita Rao, Director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi

Find more:

Mc Kinsey report: The net-zero transition What it would cost, what it could bring 

The FSR Energy Union Law Area and the Energy Community Secretariat are pleased to announce the ninth edition of the Vienna Forum on European Energy Law. This conference has established itself as one of the leading platforms for the exchange of ideas between thought leaders and decision-makers from government, industry, EU Institutions, academia, international and non-governmental organisations, law firms, and consultancies.

The Forum will take place on Thursday, 20 April 2023 at the Wiener Urania, the oldest public observatory in Austria.

Over the course of this full-day conference, a distinguished line-up of keynote speakers and panellists will discuss the policy, legal, and regulatory issues that are most salient at this watershed moment for Europe’s energy future. These include the ongoing war in Ukraine and the European Union’s policy and legal response to this crisis. Speakers will consider the plans and prospects for the reconstruction of Ukraine and contemplate the role of energy solidarity, both within and outside the European Union’s borders. At the same time, it remains crucial to consider how the objectives of the EU’s energy supply crisis response can be achieved in synergy with those of the Union’s flagship European Green Deal policy. Issues such as State Aid and market design reforms will thus also be discussed. Delegates will leave this event with a comprehensive understanding of Europe’s most pressing energy challenges and a nuanced grasp of the measures currently being developed to address them.

A detailed programme of the Forum will be published in due course.