Today, ACER publishes a policy paper on how Europe could improve the sharing of costs and benefits for cross-border electricity infrastructure. The aim is to better support the grid investments needed for a more integrated and efficient electricity system.
Why cost and benefit sharing of energy infrastructure matters
Building an integrated European electricity market requires substantial cross-border grid investments. But the current framework does not always ensure that costs are shared fairly when projects benefit several countries.
This can make it harder to realise projects with clear European or regional value. Several mechanisms already aim to address this challenge, including congestion income distribution, the inter-TSO compensation (ITC) mechanism and cross-border cost allocation (CBCA), but gaps and overlaps remain.
What is in ACER’s policy paper?
Already in July 2024, ACER committed to strengthening and improving the existing mechanisms to better reflect the costs and benefits of cross-border network infrastructure.
As part of this effort, ACER’s 2026 policy paper reviews the current mechanisms, identifies their gaps and overlaps and explores how they could be improved or redesigned to better align national investments with European and regional needs.
It presents several policy options, from targeted improvements to the existing mechanisms to broader changes to the overall cost-sharing framework and provides an initial qualitative assessment of these approaches, ahead of further ACER analysis.
