Natural Gas Balancing, Storage, and Flexibility in Europe: Assessing the Recent Literature

摘要

The liberalization process of European gas marketshas shown how pivotal is the role of both balancing mechanismsand flexibility instruments. Before the liberalization, infact, these activities were perceived as being very technical. Agrowing body of literature, instead, has demonstrated howdecentralized and market-oriented forms of managing both issuesis crucial for achievingwell-functioning and liquidwholesalemarkets. The aim of our paper is precisely to showhow the evolution of theoretical models, coupled withfindings from empirical investigations, has provided scientificjustifications for the introduction of marketorientedrules by regulators and policy makers. At present,to achieve a fully integrated European market, theEnergy Union policy framework has to attain one lastfinal target: the harmonization and integration ofbalancing and flexibility mechanisms among markets,particularly with the expected increase in intermittentgeneration.