By Martin Banks - 21st November 2011
A single market will also help to increase the amount of renewable energy in Europe
ENTSO-E
Europe needs more transmission lines to reach the EU target for a single energy market by 2014, it has been claimed.
But Jukka Ruusunen, of ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, said the 'main obstacle' to this is getting permits to build power lines.
Ruusunen, who is also the CEO of Fingrid, Finland's main TSO, is part of the high-level line-up of experts who will address more than 1000 energy trading professionals at the annual Emart Energy conference and expo in Lyon, France on Wednesday.
Speaking ahead of the event, he said, "A single market for electricity in Europe requires common rules agreed by all the European countries and enough transmission capacity to allow electricity trading across borders."
Other speakers at the conference - called 'In the European energy market we trust. Or do we?' - include Pierre Chareyre, CEO of GDF SUEZ Trading and Andras Hujber, policy officer at the commission's energy DG.
Ruusunen said, "Creating common European rules is a complex process with many stakeholders having different goals and opinions.
"The goal is to have this process completed by 2014. However, real integration requires a strong grid and building transmission lines is a long process.
"We are going to see bottlenecks in the European markets because today's transmission infrastructure is too weak for market purposes."
The creation of European level market rules is part of the third energy package and member states have committed themselves to implement the EU target model by 2014.
Ruusunen added, "This is the year when we should have functioning 'software' in the European system.
"But we need more transmission lines; and building a transmission line takes years. The main obstacle is to get permits to build lines: nobody wants to have transmission lines in their backyard. So, we cannot avoid the fact that the 'hardware' does not have the capacity to run the 'software' during this decade."
Ruusunen says ENTSO-E is working to make a single market for electricity possible adding, "We are working on market related network codes in close cooperation with other stakeholders.
"We are also participating in actual market integration projects - one example is the north-west European project where we are actually developing the biggest electricity market in the world."
He said a bigger market should "create better competition and thus provide customers with competitive prices".
"On the other hand," he says, "it provides market-based investment signals for the generators.
"A single market will also help to increase the amount of renewable energy in Europe, since a bigger system can adapt more easily to the volatile variations in wind and solar generation. An open market also allows the entry of new market players."
