Georgia Gas Study

Consumer Benefits from Deregulation of Retail Natural Gas Markets (106l PDF file). We didn't conduct this study, but provide it here because of the valuable lessons to be drawn from the Georgia experience.  The study was prepared by George R. Hall of PHB Hagler Bailley for AGL Resources Inc.

RED Index Type of Effort for Europe

The Governments of the UK and the Netherlands have jointly commissioned a study from OXERA (Oxford Economic Research Associates) monitoring competition in European gas and electricity markets. This report, Energy Liberalisation Indicators in Europe, presents the preliminary results from the study, giving full scores for electricity and gas markets in the UK and the Netherlands, as well as average values for the main European countries. The full report, containing data sources and scores for individual countries, should be made public by the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) within a few weeks.

As discussed in the OXERA Report:

"Energy market liberalization is fast emerging as a key issue in the European utility sector. With the first stages of the European Commission directives on market opening coming into effect in both gas and electricity, countries are increasingly being asked to meet liberalization targets, with the ultimate aim of creating a single European energy market.  In this context, it is becoming more and more important to be able to measure the progress of different countries in liberalizing their energy markets, both to bench mark the performance of the European Union, and to establish where particular policy changes might assist the liberalization process.

The energy liberalization indicators developed in this report aim to provide a simple analysis of the overall trends in each member state, focusing on two key objectives:

• To follow the progress of different member states in implementing the EU liberalization directives, and to track the fundamental development of the market competition and regulation in each country.
• To allow the performance of different countries to be compared, and the strengths and weaknesses of a particular country’s liberalization strategy to be assessed.

The key primary indicators, both quantitative and qualitative, have been chosen to track the important drivers of energy market development. These indicators are converted into a value in the range 0 to 10, where a value of ten represents the most conducive conditions for developing full liberalization. The primary indicators are then aggregated into two high-level indicators:

• Market competition – concentrating on the choice offered to consumers and the degree of market opening, and
• Non-competitive areas – focusing on network access arrangements and regulation."