Energy Regulatory Office Summary of URE activities in 2024 – deregulation demands and new competences of the Energy Market Regulator - News

Appointment of the Vice-President of the URE

Due to the ever-increasing number of tasks carried out by the Energy Market Regulator, the need has arisen to strengthen the composition of the URE management. On 30 October 2024, Renata Mroczek was appointed as Vice President of the URE. This came after a gap of more than a decade in filling this position.

The direct competences of the Vice-President of the URE include tasks related to, among others, the heat market, the liquid fuels market, renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, and concession fees.

New competences for the President of the URE

In 2024, the scope of competence and obligations imposed on the President of the URE has once again increased significantly. New registers and lists maintained by the Regulator, such as the Register of Energy Clusters, the List of Aggregators, and the List of Citizen Energy Communities, have formally started to function.

Last year also saw the publication of reports prepared by the URE, in accordance with the new obligations, on the development of the Polish energy storage market, an assessment of the potential for two-way charging of electric vehicles and its impact on the grid, as well as the scale of redispatching in the NPS.

At the end of July 2024, the President of the URE, also for the first time, issued guidelines on the direction of network development and the implementation of priority investments for distribution system operators, which should be included in the development plans of these companies.

The past year has been a time of intense legislative work. The President of the URE participated in the opinion of 97 drafts of national and European legislation.

According to the Authority's estimates, the implementation of the new obligations arising from only the three most relevant laws introduced in 2023-2024^[1],  requires the creation of more than 100 FTEs, for which, however, the legislator has not allocated funding.

In this context, it is also worth citing the CN code change for pure diesel introduced in December 2024, which will result in the need for the President of the URE to issue approximately 3,500 decisions amending licences for liquid fuel market operators.

Financial support is also required for the processes of building new and upgrading existing ICT tools necessary for the Authority to work properly.

Record revenues for the state budget and aid for energy companies

In 2024, the URE once again secured record revenues for the state budget, which reached nearly PLN 310 million and represented 121 per cent of the set plan. At the same time, expenditure amounted to just under PLN 90 million and was nearly three and a half times lower than the revenue guaranteed to the budget.

Fig.1 Revenue paid by URE to the state budget in 2020-2024 (PLN million)

In the context of the challenges of transforming the Polish economy, it is also important to mention the PLN 18.8 billion in aid granted by the President of the URE in 2024, under the power market, long-term contracts, as well as support for energy-intensive sectors and renewable energy producers.

Fig. 2. URE aid for companies in 2024.

As part of the tariff proceedings, the Regulator also provided the largest companies involved in the transmission, distribution and trading of electricity, natural gas and heat with regulated revenues totalling nearly PLN 128.9 billion.

At the same time, the Regulator exercised the utmost care in fulfilling the obligation to protect the interests of recipients against unjustified levels of prices and rates. As a result, recipients of electricity, heat and gas fuels paid almost PLN 13.85 billion less than the tariffs submitted to the President of the URE for approval.

Continued cooperation with DSOs within the KET framework

In 2024, the work of the agreement initiated by the President of the URE Charter for the Efficient Transformation of the Distribution Networks of the Polish Energy Sector (KET) continued. Five meetings of the KET Steering Committee were held on topics such as electromobility, network digitalisation, and the cooperation between the electricity sector and district heating, which is crucial for the success of the energy transition.

As part of the project's open formula, a further 18 distribution network operators joined the KET agreement in 2024, bringing the number of Charter signatories to 28 entities by the end of 2024. Currently, KET participants include not only DSOs, but also representatives from the energy storage industry, e-mobility sector, energy clusters and employers' organisations.

Actions to optimise the process of connection to the grid

In 2024, we again saw an increase (by almost 5 per cent) in the number of refusals to set conditions for connection to the electricity grid. At the same time, there was a significant decrease in the aggregate capacity of all refusals issued, which amounted to just under 73.6 GW and was 12 per cent lower than in 2023.

For renewable energy sources, there were 6,259 cases of refusals to issue grid connection conditions last year, with a total capacity of just under 42.4 GW.

However, it should be emphasised that the figure of 73.6 GW for all sources and 42.4 GW for RES given in the Report is the sum of the capacities from all connection requests that were submitted to the distribution and transmission grid operators in 2024 and that were refused. At the same time, this is not the real volume of capacity for which no connections were obtained in the past year. This is due to the fact that, on more than one occasion, a given trader may have submitted the same connection requests several times. Consequently, the total volume of capacity in the applications that were refused may be higher than that for which connections were not obtained.

Fig. 3. Refusals to connect to the grid 2020-2024

The President of the URE in 2024, as in previous years, has been taking steps to address the increasing number of grid connection refusals, as well as to make fuller use of the available connection capacities.

In March 2024, the Information from the President of the URE No. 15/2024 was published, which indicated the possibility of using commercial grid connections, as well as the use of new solutions such as cable pooling.

In the same month, the Authority held a meeting with energy market stakeholders on the subject of connections, which resulted in the initiation of expert teams to optimise the connection process.

The President of the URE, despite the lack of a legislative initiative, has also on several occasions presented the government party with concrete proposals for legislative changes, concerning, among other things, Articles 7 and 8 of the Energy Law.

Activities of the URE in favour of consumers

Given the variety of offers addressed to electricity consumers and the fact that it has been possible to change electricity seller in our country for almost 20 years, an important action of the Regulator was to make available on the URE website a constantly updated comparison tool of offers available on the market for the sale of electricity.

An important activity from this area was also the nationwide information campaign carried out by the Authority last year regarding the dynamic price energy sales contracts introduced in August 2024. In addition to our traditional cooperation with the media, we have also established cooperation with 2,511 town and municipal offices, 374 municipal and district consumer ombudsmen, 150 Universities of the Third Age. Graphic materials also appeared on info screens in public transport.

***

The information presented here is just a snippet of a compilation devoted to the domestic and international activities of the President of the URE in 2024. What, in detail, was the URE's activity during this period? This is what you can find out in the latest Activity Report of the President of the URE (in Polish).