The vote on electricity market reform will go almost unnoticed in the plenary agenda. The suspense has long since died down. "We will have a clear majority" behind the agreement reached with the Council in mid-December, announced the confident parliamentary rapporteur, Nicolás González Casares (S&D). It has to be said that the context has changed. The surge in energy prices that prompted the overhaul of the market is no longer an issue. The pressure on legislators to overhaul the system…
Focus on the use of CFDs to support nuclear power
The first CFD to finance a nuclear power plant was concluded for the Hinkley Point C reactors in England and approved by the European Commission in October 2014. It is being closely scrutinised by Member States wishing to develop their nuclear fleet, as State aid for the atom is not subject to any specific guidelines from the Commission.Nuclear power is excluded from the scope of the framework on State aid for climate, environmental protection and energy. The Directorate-General for Competition (DG Comp) therefore relies mainly on the founding treaties (TFEU and Euratom) to assess DFA projects in the nuclear sector and their impact on the internal market. The Hinkley Point C case law thus plays a key role.
The second nuclear project to be partly financed by CFDs is expected to be the Dukovany power plant in the Czech Republic. DG Comp will base its assessment on that of Hinkley Point C and, in part, on the new framework established by the reform of the electricity market (Article 19b of the Electricity Regulation).
As CFDs become more widespread, they will cover a very large proportion of European energy production. The European Commission has therefore indicated its intention to ensure that these contracts maintain incentives to produce according to price signals on the short-term market; supply must not be entirely uncorrelated with energy demand.