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Lecture on the development of the incentive regulation
Sylt Energy Symposium
On September 19 and 20, 2025, the Sylt Energy Symposium addressed current issues in energy law, ranging from the new regulatory tasks of the German Federal Network Agency to energy supply security and electricity grid expansion to the European framework for energy and climate policy. In his presentation on “The status and future of incentive regulation,” Prof. Weyer discussed the normative framework of incentive regulation under EU and German law, as well as the planned design of incentive regulation to be developed by the German Federal Network Agency. Based on the planned new framework determinations for the incentive regulation in the fields of electricity or gas, methodology determinations are currently being defined for five areas: the starting level for determining revenue caps, return on capital, efficiency comparisons, the general sectoral productivity factor (Xgen), and quality regulation. These determinations replace, in particular, the previous incentive regulation ordinance (ARegV) and the electricity and gas grid fee ordinances (StromNEV, GasNEV). According to the case law of the European Court of Justice, these statutory regulations violate the provisions of the internal energy market directives on the exclusive competence and independence of national regulatory authorities. They will expire at the end of the fourth regulatory period, i.e. with the end of the year 2027 (GasNEV) or 2028 (StromNEV and ARegV). The slides of the presentation can be found here.
