Entrepreneurs who wish to prepare for the implementation of the new energy efficiency directive and become “early movers” or even to establish potential consequences, in particular, costs for adjustment to the prospective provisions, may face some difficulties.
Beneath a few potential dilemmas of crucial importance.
It is difficult at present to formulate suggestions for precise actions when it comes to introduction, at the level of enterprises, of measures envisioned by the new directive or to recommend for specific methods of adaptation.
The legal act giving rise to these problems is the European Commission’s Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on energy efficiency and repealing Directives 2004/8/EC and 2006/32/EC {SEC(2011) 779 final} {SEC(2011) 780 final} (COM(2011) 370 final) published on 22 June 2011.
The entry into force of the said Proposal (Member States will be obliged to bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the said Directive within 12 months after the entry into force of the new legal measure) will mean the significant change in the legal environment, especially for energy market.
The new directive intends to repeal the Directives 2006/32/EC and 2004/8/EC.
The obstacles to map the consequences (financial including) as regards business activity of the enterprises arise from several options of crucial significance leaved by draft regulatory measure.
1. Who should prepare for new burdens: energy distributors or retail energy sales companies?
The first dilemma is that the new draft directive generally obliges each Member State to set up an energy efficiency obligation scheme but does not sufficiently precise which category of business entities should be burdened with the new costs. Pursuant to the Proposal the said scheme should ‘ensure that either all energy distributors or all retail energy sales companies operating on the Member State's territory achieve annual energy savings equal to 1.5% of their energy sales, by volume, in the previous year in that Member State excluding energy used in transport. This amount of energy savings shall be achieved by the obligated parties among final customers’.
According to the Proposal for the new directive 'energy distributor' means a natural or legal person, including a distribution system operator, responsible for transporting energy with a view to its delivery to final customers or to distribution stations that sell energy to final customers and 'retail energy sales company' means a natural or legal person who sells energy to final customers.
It follows that we know so far the new regulatory requirement of annual energy savings equal to 1.5% of energy sales (by volume) is at stake but the sphere of the entities obliged (among the two categories mentioned) is leaved to the discretion of the Member States.