Infrastructures and Sustainability

Against the backdrop of the European Green Deal and the subsequent ‘Fit for 55’ Package, the basic infrastructures will have to become more sustainable over the course of their entire lifecycles, i.e., from design to building, maintenance, operations and eventual decommissioning. Digitalisation, of course, will have a key role to play in advancing this objective, for instance, by optimising capacity utilisation, thus reducing needs for physical infrastructure expansion.

While rendering infrastructures climate-proof will take different forms across the various network industries, all of them will have to confront a set of critical questions pertaining to regulatory policy, financing and taxation, among others. In view of this, the Florence School of Regulation’s first Sustainability Conference “Greening Infrastructures” (22 – 23 June 2022) tackled these questions in respect to energy and transport infrastructures.

This special issue of the NIQ further explores the topic of “Infrastructures and Sustainability” and features some of the best papers that were presented at the FSR Sustainability Conference.

The first contribution by Astier, Rajagopal and Wolak discusses empirical evidence from France suggesting that distributed wind and solar units alone are unlikely to lead to substantial savings in future grid investments.

Chu Donatus, Semassou, Ahouansou and Nsanyuy examine the sustainability of some installed renewable-based power systems in Cameroon and identify pull factors. They, furthermore, go on to make recommendations for the sector.

Cardinale and Emara find that Algeria has a potential cost advantage in transporting green hydrogen to Europe thanks to overcapacity in its existing gas infrastructure, which could be upgraded. By contrast, Egypt is more competitive in the generation of renewable power, a key input of green hydrogen, thanks to regulation that attracts investments.

Serafimova and Finger argue that if it is adequately designed and implemented the ReFuelEU Aviation Initiative could kick-start the European SAF market by fostering a reduction in SAF production costs with economies of scale and technological advances. But since SAFs alone cannot be considered a silver bullet their uptake will have to be accompanied by complementary and coherent efforts concerning other policy levers, such as carbon pricing, energy taxation and air traffic control, among others.

From Data Spaces to Data Governance

In February 2020, the European Commission (EC) presented its  European Data Strategy, whose main objectives are to set up European Data Spaces, to create a single market for data and to de-velop an attractive, secure and dynamic data economy. Common European data spaces in the sectors of health, environment, energy, agriculture, mobility, finance, manufacturing, public administration, and skills, will ensure that more data becomes available for use in the economy and society, while keeping the companies and individuals who generate the data in control. The Data Governance Act published by the EC in November 2020, constitutes the first of the legislative proposals presented in the EU Data Strategy and applies to both per-sonal and non-personal data. Its main objectives are to strengthen the availability of data for use by increasing trust in data intermediaries and to stimulate data sharing mechanisms across the EU.

This special issue of the Network Industries Quarterly is dedicated to some of the best papers that were presented at the 11th FSR Annual Conference on the Regulation of Infrastructures “From Data Spaces to Data Governance”. The conference offered a timely occasion to take stock of the progress made in the various network industries towards the objectives outlined in the EU Data Strategy and the Data Governance Act.

The first contribution by Donne examines the impact of data sharing in the electricity sector from the perspectives first of companies and then of public authorities.

Tombal analyses whether two horizontal legislative initiatives sup-porting business-to-government (B2G) data sharing can contribute to environmental protection. More specifically, his paper looks at the voluntary ‘data altruism’ mechanism provided in the Data Governance Act and at the compulsory B2G data sharing obligation for ‘exceptional needs’ provided in the Data Act proposal.

Mannan, Wong and Bietti present research on the impact of data governance legislation on ‘data cooperatives.’ In particular, their paper explores the opportunities and challenges presented by new legislative developments and argues for a shift in how public institutions engage with existing data cooperatives to both cater for their needs and enable bolder forms of collective data management. 

Catanzariti explores the tension between the use of extraterritorial claims for data and the opposite response of data nationalism. Arguing that both are forms of territory-based control, her paper proposes ap-plying a functional approach to data sharing – as an alternative to data location – to the project for an EU cloud.

Teodora Serafimova

Research Associate, Transport Area – Florence School of Regulation, EUI

Sustainability and the Energy Transition in Türkiye

This special issue of Network Industries Quarterly deals with a very important and timely topic: the energy transition and sustainability more generally. Although the urgent need for an energy revolution — based on renewables and energy efficiency measures so as to reduce the emissions that are rapidly warming our planet – has been globally recognised, the energy sector is still dominated by fossil fuels as the main emitters of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Governments have started to define pathways towards mitigating GHGs, but this is a long process and the energy transition cannot follow a one-size-fits-all model. It involves a combination of technologies, policies, regulations, financing and human resources. This issue analyses Türkiye’s energy transition and decarbonisation policies and discusses its implementation as well as its challenges going forward.

Geylan presents a snapshot of current climate mitigation policies in Türkiye in the light of the pressing global climate agenda and geopolitical risks, and provides policy recommendations to accelerate the energy transition in the country.

Varis analyses Türkiye’s NDCs under the Paris Agreement, its current energy transition policy as well as its international investment policy into the energy sector. The article particularly focuses on the legal foreign direct investment framework and the interrelation between Turkish law and the Paris Agreement.

Sanli argues that there is a need for ‘green nudges’ to alleviate the adverse effects of the recent energy crisis and discusses the behavioural dimension of energy policies for Türkiye. He stresses the importance of data and algorithms so as to be able to gain insights into consumer behaviour, which would be useful for improving energy services.

Dalgic and Finger reflect on the main messages in the study entitled ‘Assessment of a Carbon Tax as a Tool to Decarbonise Türkiye’s Energy Supply’ which was conducted by the Istanbul Center for Regulation (IC4R). The study analyses policy options to meet the country’s NDC commitments. With the aim of quantifying the economic costs and impacts of possible climate mitigation policies, the study indicates possible policy options for Turkish policymakers. In particular, it analyses the effects of subsidies for renewable energy and employment resulting from carbon taxes on all polluting energy types.

Deniz Ece Dalgic
Manager, Istanbul Center for Regulation

Digital platforms: The new network industries?

This special issue of NIQ explores and further clarifies the conceptu­alisation (and subsequent regulation) of digital platforms (or elements of them) as the “new network industries.” This idea was put forward in the book by Montero, J. & Finger, M. The rise of the new network industries, Regulating digital platforms (London: Routledge, 2021). Others have developed similar lines of thought (e.g. Busch, C., Regu­lation of digital platforms as infrastructures for services of general interest. WISO Diskurs, 9/2021). We have invited these and other authors to contribute to this debate.

The first contribution, by Finger and Montero, summarises their most recent thinking on how digitalisation affects infrastructure and the public services it provides.

The second contribution, by Busch, further develops his idea of dig­ital platforms as “infrastructure of general interest” and derives corre­sponding policy implications.

In the third contribution, Rodriguez de las Heras Ballel puts for­ward her idea of “platforms as regulators of critical intermediation in­frastructure,” something the author calls “platform power.”

The fourth contribution takes the form of an interview with Koen Baekelandt, Senior Legal Counsel Regulatory Affairs at Amadeus IT. Amadeus constitutes one of the very first network industry platforms, from which interesting and relevant learnings can be drawn on our topic.

As of this issue, we merge Network Industries Quarterly and Network Industries Quarterly Turkey into a single quarterly publication. While Network Industries Quarterly, which was started 24 years ago, focused mainly on industrialised countries, Network Industries Quarterly Tur­key was started two years ago and focused on Turkey and comparable emerging countries. From now on, we will cover evolving network industries in both industrialised and emerging countries alike.