Scientists from St Petersburg University: the modern energy sector needs new legislation
Young scientists from St Petersburg University have held a round table "Energy-2022: Innovations in Technology and Law" as part of the Russian Energy Week Forum. The participants discussed new solutions that have been implemented in the fuel and energy sector and the specifics of their legal regulation.
Traditional energy resources cannot satisfy all energy needs, and the energy markets are undergoing a technological transformation, with innovations that would have been hard to imagine just a decade ago.
During the round table discussion, Nikita Derkach, a master’s student at St Petersburg University, spoke about demand-side management aggregation, a concept of conscious load shifting by electricity consumers as a response to economic signals in the energy market. This technology envisages the emergence of new actors in the electricity sector, such as demand-side management aggregators. Their activities will help to compensate for increases in electricity prices during peak loads, reduce grid deterioration and improve the safety of the energy supply.
As demand-side management is a new tool in the Russian energy sector, its legal regulation should be modified to be integrated into the legal framework.
The scientists spoke about the active development of energy storage systems. Iurii Sychev, Doctor of Engineering, explained that energy storage systems is a complex mechanism developed from portable devices, energy banks, which have been scaled up and further modified. However, energy storage has yet to be legally regulated.
In August 2017, the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation published the Concept for the Development of the Market for Electricity Storage Systems in the Russian Federation. The Concept envisaged eliminating a number of regulatory and legal barriers, including establishing a legal definition of an energy storage system, the legal status of the owner in the sale of electricity, and the specifications for technological connection of energy storage systems to power grids. This should facilitate the formation of an economic model involving the energy storage systems in the wholesale and retail energy markets.
The Centre for Energy Law at St Petersburg University brings together lawyers, economists, experts in geology, ecology, nature management, physics, and information technology. They conduct interdisciplinary scientific research for the energy industry.
Currently, the Russian Government is discussing a draft decree ’On amendments to some acts of the Government of the Russian Federation on the functioning of electrical energy accumulation systems in the energy sector’. It outlines a certain model for the integration of the energy storage systems into the legal regulation of the energy sector. ’Time will show the future of the draft, but it is clear that this area should not be left without new legal mechanisms,’ said Kristina Semenovich, Director of the Centre for Energy Law at St Petersburg University.
Another issue is the legal framework for the circulation of hydrogen. The use of hydrogen as a peaceful energy carrier is becoming a new global trend. Hydrogen is a versatile and clean energy resource, and its use eliminates greenhouse gas emissions.
Hydrogen energy, as a new branch of the fuel and energy sector, requires regulation, not only within individual states, but through international cooperation.
Thus, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its Global Hydrogen Review 2022 stressed the importance of removing legal barriers, developing a stable regulatory framework and improving regulatory processes for issuing licences and permits for hydrogen production and trade. Bojana Petrović, a graduate of St Petersburg University and a specialist at NIS a.d. Novi Sad (Belgrade, Serbia), spoke about the emerging EU legislation in this field.
For Russia, the experts see two possible ways of creating a legal framework for hydrogen energy. One is to develop a separate body of laws and regulations that would establish the legal basis for economic relations in the new fuel and energy sector. The alternative is to define hydrogen as a separate object of legal regulation in gas supply legislation. Kristina Semenovich believes that upgrading the gas supply legislation will enable the most effective and least time-consuming incorporation of the new energy resource into the current model of the legal framework of the energy system.
The round table was attended by researchers, students and alumni of St Petersburg University and Saint Petersburg Mining University.