ACER and CEER’s 2025 Monitoring Report analyses how retail electricity markets can contribute to unlocking consumer flexibility in the context of the energy transition.

Consumers’ active participation in retail electricity markets can help Europe accelerate the transition to clean energy. However, the potential of this consumer (also called demand-side) flexibility remains largely untapped due to the uptake of inflexible contracts, uneven smart meter rollout and limited competition in some retail markets.

What are the regulators' key findings? 

• While retail electricity prices have stabilised, lower wholesale prices were not fully passed onto consumers mainly due to inflexible contracts.
• Inflexible contracts that protected consumers during the crisis are now leaving many households tied to contracts above prevailing wholesale market prices.
• The uptake of dynamic and time-of-use contracts is limited in most Member States; inflexible contracts remain dominant.
• Smart meter rollout and data accessibility progress unevenly across the EU.
• Households with higher electrification potential (e.g. owners of electric vehicles or with solar PVs) can provide greater flexibility and achieve larger savings, provided that appropriate contract structures and tools are in place.

What are the main recommendations? 

• Complete the rollout of smart meters and ensure consumers and authorised third parties have standardised and secure access to consumption data.
• Facilitate dynamic and time-differentiated offers.
• Phase out general price interventions while maintaining targeted support for vulnerable consumers.
• Encourage competition and innovation in retail markets to expand consumer choice and engagement.

A retail market that reflects market conditions and provides clear, timely price signals can help consumers contribute to a more efficient, affordable and decarbonised electricity system.

This report is complemented by ACER’s other retail monitoring products, including country sheets (electricity and gas) and a retail pricing dashboard.

Have you heard? ACER is looking for its next Director to run ACER. 

This isn’t just any job

The Director heads ACER, the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators, and plays a key role in driving secure, sustainable and efficient energy markets across the EU. This helps EU competitiveness and security of supply.

The successful candidate will lead a highly skilled multicultural team at ACER’s headquarters in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Beyond managing the Agency, the Director will shape its strategic direction at a time when Europe’s energy system is undergoing profound transformation, and help empower generations towards a clean energy future. They will work closely with national energy regulators, EU institutions and a wide range of stakeholders.

The mandate is for five years, with the possibility of a five-year extension.

Applications are open until 9 December 2025 (noon Brussels time).

ACER is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all qualified candidates, with particular encouragement for women to apply.

See the vacancy notice for full details and instructions on how to apply. 

Help us spread the word!

Know any potential candidates? Send them this article or share our LinkedIn post with your networks.

On 6 November 2025, ACER received the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity' (ENTSO-E’) s proposal to amend the European Resource Adequacy Assessment (ERAA) methodology. On 17 November, ENTSO-E complemented its submission by providing the results of their public consultation on the topic (summer 2025).

What is the methodology about?

The ERAA, mandated by the Clean Energy Package (2019), is ENTSO-E’s annual assessment of the EU’s electricity supply adequacy for the next decade. Its purpose is to evaluate whether the EU has sufficient electricity resources to meet future demand and to identify potential risks to security of supply. Each year, the assessment is subject to ACER approval.

At national level, Member States define their own reliability standards (based on ACER’s methodology), to set the level of security of electricity supply they require. The ERAA annual assessment provides a consistent, objective tool to evaluate adequacy risks against those standards and whether the introduction of national measures (such as capacity mechanisms) is needed.

Why amend the methodology?

As part of the Electricity Market Design reform (2024), the European Commission was tasked with assessing ways to streamline and simplify the capacity mechanisms’ approval process. The Commission’s streamlining report (March 2025), included a request for ACER to amend the ERAA methodology. ACER subsequently required ENTSO-E to propose the necessary amendments to ensure the ERAA is aligned with the Commission’s streamlining report.

In August 2025, the Commission also adopted the Clean Industrial State Aid Framework, which introduces a fast-track process for approving capacity mechanisms. To support this framework, the ERAA methodology needs to define the procedure for calculating, within the ERAA annual process, the parameters necessary for Member States to make use of the fast-track approval process.

What are the main amendments?

The amendments to the ERAA methodology focus on:

1.  Supporting capacity mechanism approvals                                                                                            

• Introducing capacity mechanism parameters derived from the ERAA model, which Member States may use to benefit from the fast-track process.

2.  Simplifying the methodology 

• Focusing the model on key target years (instead of explicitly modelling every year of the next decade).
• Streamlining how Member States’ efforts to avoid regulatory distortions or market failures are represented in the ERAA.

3.   Improving adequacy modelling 

• Developing a new Trends and Projections scenario to better reflect the actual pace of the energy transition.
• Improving the modelling of investors’ risk aversions and introducing a more realistic representation of flexible resources (e.g. batteries and demand response)’ business case.

What are the next steps?

ACER aims to decide on the methodology by February 2026. 

ACER’s REMIT Quarterlies provide updates on the Regulation on Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency (REMIT) and related activities, including insights into the 2024 revision of the REMIT Regulation to help stakeholders stay informed on changes that enhance transparency and integrity in the European energy market.

What is in the latest REMIT Quarterly?

The 42nd edition covers the third quarter of 2025 and provides details about the upcoming workshop on REMIT implementation updates, scheduled for 28 November 2025. 

The report also includes:

• ACER’s ongoing preparatory work on data reporting under the revised REMIT, pending finalisation of the revised Implementing Regulation.
• Key takeaways from Expert Groups’ meetings in September and October on Wholesale Energy Market Data Reporting and Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency.
• Updated datasets in ACER's REMIT Data Reference Centre, now including information up to September 2025.
• An update on market surveillance, with statistics on 444 REMIT breach cases under review at the end of Q3.
• A summary of market activity, showing a year-on-year increase in trading on Organised Market Places, driven by growth in natural gas forward markets.

ACER’s 2025 Monitoring Report on security of EU electricity supply 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 trends did ACER find in 2024? 

• The EU’s interconnected power system helps keep the lights on.
  • 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.
  • Almost €11 billion was spent in 2024 across the EU on a fragmented set of nearly 40 security-of-supply measures.
  • 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 and demand response.
  • 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 was directed to low-emission technologies in 2024, while natural gas will lead in long-term contracts until 2035.
  • Although EU gas demand is expected to fall by 15% by 2035, gas-fired power plants are 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.
  • Limited coordination in Member States’ adoption of capacity and flexibility measures could risk duplication and inefficient investment.
• 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.

What are ACER’s recommendations? 

• Make capacity mechanisms cleaner by removing barriers to distributed energy, enable demand response and disclose how much capacity support goes to fossil-fuels.
• Make capacity mechanisms more efficient, coordinating capacity planning at EU level and reassessing the design of capacity auctions, particularly in markets with consistently high prices.
• Integrate flexibility measures into capacity mechanisms or better align them to reduce overlaps and inefficiencies.
• Strengthen regional cooperation on risk preparedness through exchange of best practices, shared templates and joint implementation monitoring.

Today, ACER releases its Opinion on Spain’s National Resource Adequacy Assessment (NRAA). This national assessment complements the European Resource Adequacy Assessment (ERAA) 2024, reflecting recent developments in the country’s electricity system, including the integration of the Balearic Islands and Ceuta.

What is a resource adequacy assessment?

The European Resource Adequacy Assessment (ERAA) evaluates electricity resource adequacy across the EU and provides a consistent framework to assess whether additional national measures are needed to ensure security of supply. ERAA is carried out annually by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) and reviewed by ACER.

Member States can complement the European analysis through national assessments (NRAAs). While based on the ERAA methodology, NRAAs may capture new developments or national specificities not yet reflected in the latest ERAA.

When a national assessment identifies new adequacy concerns, and the Member State informs ACER, ACER must issue an Opinion on the differences between the national and European assessments.

What did ACER find?

Overall, ACER finds the Spanish assessment clear, robust and well executed and notes that most differences with the ERAA 2024 are justified by national specificities and local factors.

Spain’s assessment shows higher electricity adequacy risks for 2030. While results for 2028 are in line with the European assessment, the NRAA estimates that by 2030 the country could experience periods when electricity demand exceeds available supply for more than two hours per year, above the national reliability standard that sets the target level of supply adequacy.

These higher projected risks are linked to two differences identified by ACER between the Spanish NRAA and the ERAA 2024:

• Lower storage capacity: The NRAA assumes that only storage projects already planned or under development will materialise. As a result, Spain would have around half the storage capacity estimated in the ERAA for 2030, limiting the system’s ability to balance variable renewable generation and meet peak demand.
• Stricter gas generation assumptions: Spain’s assessment applies lower generation availability for gas turbine fleet based on historical data, including fixed maintenance schedules. This reduces the generation capacity expected to be available during periods of high demand.

ACER finds the assumptions of lower storage capacity and fixed gas turbine maintenance insufficiently motivated for 2030, as they could better reflect the expected evolution of the electricity system. However, their impact on the overall results of the NRAA is limited, as the modelling approach used (based on a resource expansion calculation) tends to compensate for the missing storage capacity. 

What are the next steps?

ACER encourages the Spanish authorities to take its findings into account as the assessment process progresses.

See other ACER’s opinions on national assessments.