With increasing variability of demand and supply, transmission system operators (TSOs) across Europe adapt their internal processes and operational approaches. These processes comprise different interfaces with other market participants (e.g. via balancing markets, reserve procurement or NTC...

Long‐term energy contracts have featured prominently in many decisions of the European Commission to support the opening of the electricity markets. Contracts were seen to foreclose the market hence the Commission comprehensively unwound pre‐existing long‐term contracts and formulated...

Decarbonization goals of the European Commission foresee different future scenarios for the European power market of which all are exceeding 60% renewables in the power system.3 High shares of intermittent renewable sources require significant changes to the physical system and impact the...

Gas‐fired power plants constitute a direct and important link between the gas and the electricity sectors and thus between the Target Models for electricity and gas. As the need for a flexible operation of gas-fired power plants will increase in tomorrow’s low‐carbon power markets, so also...

Current EU short-term market designs for electricity face several challenges in (i) securing efficient system operation (ii) unlocking the full potential of flexible resources and (iii) fostering effective use of transmission capacity. For a gradual reform of market design and to guarantee...

After more than a decade of supporting power from renewable energy (RE) through guaranteed feed-in tariffs, the German Government has initiated reforms to integrate RE into the market. To eventually achieve market integration requires that RE investors carry power market risks, in particular the...

Buildings account for about 40% of the final energy consumed in Germany and arguably offer both low-cost and large scale energy efficiency improvement potentials. The Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) was recently introduced to capture this potential by providing information about the energy...

Executive Summary The German government aims to reduce primary energy demand by 80% until 2050 and heating demand by 20% until 2020. Besides the need for additional efforts to achieve these targets, Germany has already implemented a set of policies and programmes to increase investments in...

The German government has committed to reducing the primary energy demand of buildings by 80% by 2050. Achieving this reduction will require foremost efficiency improvements, with a first milestone of a 20% reduction in heat demand levels by 2020. Given that about 80% of today’s building stock...

Installations covered by the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) can use credits from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to cover a share of their emissions. The CDM credits are generated by low-carbon projects in developing countries that require the CDM support to become financially...