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Does Ownership Unbundling Matter? Evidence from UK Energy Markets

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Does Ownership Unbundling Matter? Evidence from UK Energy Markets A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Davies, Stephen; Waddams Price, Catherine Article — Published Version Does ownership unbundling matter? Evidence from UK energy markets Intereconomics Suggested Citation: Davies, Stephen; Waddams Price, Catherine (2007) : Does ownership unbundling matter? Evidence from UK energy markets, Intereconomics, ISSN 0020-5346, Springer, Heidelberg, Vol. 42, Iss. 6, pp. 297-301, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10272-007-0231-x This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/41975 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu DOI: 10.1007/s10272-007-0231-x FORUM Vertical Unbundling in the EU Electricity Sector In its September 2007 package of energy policy proposals the European Commission has expressed a clear preference for ownership unbundling as the most effective way of separating transmission from other stages of the value chain, which is regarded as necessary in order to promote infrastructure investment, fair network access and market transparency. The welfare effects of this measure are, however, still hotly debated. The following articles highlight the pros and cons of ownership unbundling. Michael G. Pollitt* Ownership Unbundling of Energy Networks wnership unbundling of electricity and gas net- utility (VI), e.g. German utilities such as RWE or EON Oworks has recently become a key issue in Eu- de facto. ropean energy market liberalisation. The September In this paper I will address three questions. First, 2007 package of proposed energy legislation from the what is the evidence for the impact of ownership un- European Commission names ownership unbundling bundling in electricity and gas markets? Second, are of electricity and gas transmission networks as the alternative arrangements such as the ISO or LTSO preferred form of organisation of transmission owner- models likely to be suffi cient? Third, will the arguments ship, with an alternative option of an independent sys- for ownership unbundling become stronger and more tem operator (ISO) where integration of transmission extensive over time? asset ownership with electricity generation/gas pro- Econometric Evidence – Electricity and Gas duction, distribution or retail continues. There are few econometric studies which look at un- Some countries are in the process of extending bundling specifi cally, for the reasons of the simultane- ownership unbundling even further – to electricity ous timing of different reform elements and diffi culties and gas distribution networks (e.g. the Netherlands) – in modelling the variance in the underlying resource emulating New Zealand where the creation of stand- costs (particularly in gas). Fewer studies still look at alone electricity distribution network companies was ownership unbundling as distinct from legal unbun- completed in 1999. dling. We briefl y review the studies here (see Pollitt for 2 Pollitt1 lays out the theoretical arguments for and more details ). against ownership unbundling of electricity and gas Ernst and Young3 regress industrial gas prices in a transmission networks. In that paper I identifi ed fi ve sample of countries against a number of variables in- models of vertical relationship within electricity and cluding the existence of a separate transmission op- gas supply industries. These were the independent erator (legal or ownership unbundled). This is highly transmission system operator (ITSO), e.g. National signifi cant and is correlated with signifi cantly lower Grid in the UK, the legally unbundled transmission prices.4 Gas prices seem to be around 15% lower as a system operator (LTSO), e.g. RTE in France, the inde- result of unbundling. pendent system operator (ISO), e.g. PJM in the US, 1 M. Pollitt: The arguments for and against ownership unbundling of hybrid models with both ISO and independent trans- energy transmission networks, in: Energy Policy, forthcoming 2007. mission operators (ISO/ITO), e.g. CAMMESA/Transen- 2 Ibid. er in Argentina, and the traditional vertically integrated 3 Ernst & Young: Final Report Research Project: The Case for Liberali- sation. London 2006. * Judge Business School and ESRC Electricity Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge, UK. 4 Ibid., p. 140. 292 Intereconomics, November/December 2007 FORUM A similar but more sophisticated study by Copen- over time.10 Clearly a lack of ownership unbundling is hagen Economics5 also examines electricity and gas not the only factor here, but it is suggestive of wors- price trends in the EU using data for 1990–2003. They ening competitive problems in the, de facto, vertically fi nd that for electricity, higher levels of unbundling integrated German market. (with ownership unbundling being the highest form) Finally, van Koten and Ortmann11 fi nd a positive cor- lead to lower electricity prices.6 They do not fi nd the relation between the lower level of corruption in an result holds for gas. EU15 country and the strength of unbundling legisla- Alesina et al.7 examine the effect of deregulation in tion (with ownership unbundling being the strongest a number of sectors, using OECD measures of prod- form). The authors urge robust action in the face of uct market reform. They fi nd that for electricity and lobbying by utilities. gas investment in the sectors examined increases as Case Study Evidence – Electricity the vertical integration score decreases (with owner- ship unbundling having the lowest vertical integration Turning to case studies of actual experience we score). draw up a list of leading reform countries. We choose the leading jurisdictions on the basis of the extent of 8 Steiner uses panel data for 19 OECD countries competition in generation and retail and the sophis- covering 1986–1996. She fi nds that the separation of tication and effectiveness of regulation. We can then generation and transmission is not associated with ask the question as to what has been the extent of un- lower prices but is associated with higher capac- bundling (noted in [ ] below) in each case and draw ity utilisation rates. However, this study assumes that lessons.12 unbundling includes accounting separation as well as stricter models of unbundling. • New Zealand—[ITSO]: Disintegration of ECNZ and successful introduction of competition. Hattori and Tsutsui9 examine similar OECD data on the impact of unbundling of transmission from genera- • Australia—[ITSO]: Victoria and South Australia have tion, third party access, the existence of a wholesale successfully implemented ownership unbundling. market and the impact of privatisation. They fi nd that • Chile—[ISO initially, now ISO/ITO]: A successful re- their unbundling variable (which includes legal and form with an ISO but now there is an ISO and an in- ownership unbundling) seems to raise prices. dependent transmission company.13 The results of these last two studies are confusing. • Argentina—[ISO/ITO]: A successful and radical re- They do however fi nd that privatisation and third party form of transmission. Competitive bidding/user access in transmission reduce fi nal prices. Thus, if un- participation was successfully introduced for trans- bundling makes these easier to implement effectively mission expansions.14 there may be no measured effect from the unbundling • Nordic countries—[ITSOs with regional coordina- itself. tion]: Creation of highly successful Nord Pool and A recent econometric comparison of the respon- independent TSOs (in Norway, Sweden, Finland and siveness of electricity prices to cost changes in the Denmark). UK and Germany found that UK prices were better explained by short-run cost factors and that the link between costs and prices in Germany was declining 10 Cf. G. Zachmann: A Markov Switching Model of the Merit Or- der to Compare British and German Price Formation, mimeo (gzach- [email protected]), 2006. 11 5 Copenhagen Economics: Market Opening in Network Industries: S. van Koten, A. Ortmann: The Unbundling Regime for Electric- Part II Sectoral Analyses, Copenhagen Economics for DG Internal ity Utilities in the EU: A Case of Legislative and Regulatory Capture?, Market, 2005. in: Charles University Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Economics 6 Ibid., p. 102. Institute, Working Paper No. 328, 2007. 7 A. Alesina, S. Ardagna, G. Nicoletti, F. Schiantarelli: 12 For a good overview of each of these countries/regions we discuss Regulation and Investment, in: Journal of the
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