spent in the EU on fragmented security-of-supply measures.
2025 Monitoring Report
Ensuring secure electricity supply is essential for European households and businesses. Doing so in a reliable, low-carbon and cost-effective way is central to the EU’s economic competitiveness and clean energy objectives.
ACER’s 2025 Monitoring Report looks at whether Europe had adequate electricity supply in 2024, including risk preparedness, cross-sectoral electricity-gas interactions and the total cost of national support measures such as capacity mechanisms and flexibility schemes that help keep the lights on.
What did ACER monitoring find?
- The EU’s interconnected power system helps keep the lights on across Member States.
- In 2024, power outage levels averaged under two hours per year across the EU, and none were due to inadequate electricity supply.
- Fragmented support measures come with an annual price tag of €11 billion.
- ACER found that almost €11 billion was spent in 2024 across the EU on a fragmented set of nearly 40 security-of-supply measures. The report highlights opportunities to moderate this spending by improving coordination and transparency, while maintaining reliable electricity supply.
- Capacity mechanisms are justified if the annual European Resource Adequacy Assessment (ERAA), or alternatively a national assessment, identifies a risk of inadequate supply. Any capacity mechanism must be cleared by the European Commission under State aid rules. These mechanisms rely on a broad range of technologies from dispatchable gas-powered generation to batteries (which store excess energy during times of abundant solar and wind power and release it when needed) and demand response (which reduces consumption at peak times).
- Member States can also introduce flexibility measures, again if cleared under EU State aid rules.
- Capacity mechanisms have yet to become cleaner, gas will still play a role.
- Only 29% of capacity support payments were directed to low-emission technologies in 2024, while natural gas will lead in long-term contract payments until 2035, increasing the risk of fossil-fuel lock-in and slowing decarbonisation.
- Although EU gas demand is expected to fall by 15% by 2035, gas-fired power plants will remain a critical safety net, projected to cover 30% of peak demand.
- Capacity mechanisms have yet to become more efficient, coordination can help.
- Capacity auction prices vary more than tenfold across the EU.
- In 2024, capacity mechanisms cost €6.5 billion (more than double the cost in 2020). Stronger cross-border coordination could reduce additional capacity needs, lowering overall system costs.
- ACER cautions that limited coordination in Member States’ adoption of capacity mechanisms (for adequacy) and flexibility measures could risk duplication and inefficient investment decisions.
- Regional and cross-sectoral coordination on risk preparedness remain weak.
- Only 10% of national risk preparedness plans include joint measures to mitigate the impact of electricity crises and assist neighbouring countries.
- Cross-sectoral dependencies (i.e. between gas and electricity) are often overlooked.
ACER’s recommendations
- Make capacity mechanisms cleaner.
- Remove barriers for distributed energy resources to participate in capacity mechanisms and implement ACER’s no-regret actions to enable demand response.
- Be transparent on how much capacity support goes to fossil-fuels.
- Make capacity mechanisms more efficient.
- Use a coordinated European approach to capacity dimensioning, building on the European Resource Adequacy Assessment (ERAA).
- Reassess the design of capacity auctions, particularly in markets with consistently high prices.
- Integrate flexibility measures into capacity measures or better align them.
- Realise synergies between adequacy and flexibility needs.
- Adapt existing schemes to co-optimise procurement, reducing overlaps and inefficiencies.
- Strengthen regional cooperation on risk preparedness.
- Enhance cross-sector coordination in risk preparedness planning.
- Address barriers to regional cooperation and facilitate coordination through exchange of best practices, shared templates and joint implementation monitoring.
Highlights
-
~ €11 bn
-
10-fold
gap in capacity auction prices across the EU.
-
1h 45 min
average disconnection time (no cases due to inadequate electricity supply).
Report
ACER’s annual monitoring report on security of EU electricity supply:
- analyses electricity supply adequacy and system performance across the EU;
- assesses risk preparedness and cross-sectoral interactions; and
- highlights opportunities to improve efficiency through greater transparency and coordination.
Infographic
Interested in the main highlights of our report?