The EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) publishes today a decision approving the harmonised allocation rules for long-term transmission rights (HAR) proposed by all Transmission System Operators (TSOs) for electricity. These rules should ensure a transparent and non-discriminatory capacity allocation of long-term transmission rights to all market participants.

The HAR entail a uniform set of forward market rules for the whole EU that promotes the development of a liquid and competitive market, while providing market participants with equal opportunities to hedge their risk associated with cross-zonal electricity trading.

What common requirements do they set?

The HAR set out common requirements for participation in auctions, provide details on collaterals, specify the organization of auctions, specify the returns and transfers of long-term transmission rights, determine the rules for remuneration and compensation of long-term transmission rights, determine the fallback procedures, describe the principles of invoicing and payments and other related aspects needed for a proper functioning of forward capacity allocation.

The principles set out by the HAR will be applied together with the regional annexes that are approved by the concerned regulatory authorities. These annexes may introduce regional or bidding zone border specific requirements describing a particular type of long-term transmission rights, their remuneration regime, alternative fallback mechanism and compensation rules defining regional firmness.

Access the decision.

On 16 November 2021, the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) received a proposal from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) for the first pan-European resource adequacy assessment (ERAA 2021). The purpose of the assessment is to monitor the risks to security of electricity supply and identify adequacy concerns.

​​​Following the approval of the ERAA methodology in October 2020, ENTSO-E needs to carry out an annual ERAA to assess whether the EU has sufficient electricity resources to meet its future demand. ERAA describes the expected level of security of supply for a ten-year horizon.

Member States set their own electricity reliability standards based on the value of lost load and the cost of new entry for generation or demand response. The reliability standard indicates the necessary level of security of electricity supply for a given Member State.

By comparing these results, ERAA aims to identify potential resource adequacy concerns in the EU and provide an objective basis for assessing the need for additional national measures ensuring security of electricity supply such as the introduction of temporary capacity mechanisms.

To date, ENTSO-E performed the European Mid-term Adequacy Forecast (MAF) with the same ten-year time horizon. Mandated by the Clean Energy Package legislation and based on ACER-approved methodologies, ERAA replaces the MAF and will be key in improving the monitoring of security of electricity supply in Europe.

In order to inform its assessment, ACER invites interested third parties to submit their observations by 7 December 2021 to ACER-ELE-2021-011(at)acer.europa.eu.

The deadline for ACER to reach a decision on ERAA 2021 is 17 February 2022.​

Access the related ACER public notice.