ENTSOG has improved the transparency on the process, strengthened the communication with project promoters and further developed its Project Data Portal to ensure the best possible availability, consistency and quality of the collected project data. This in exchange ensures the quality of the assessment.
For each TYNDP, ENTSOG collects information on existing infrastructure capacities directly from TSOs (for transmission infrastructures) as well as from GIE1 (for LNG regasification terminals and storage facilities). For TYNDP 2020 the existing capacity was collected as of 1 January 2019.
In order to provide a holistic view of the European gas system over the next 20 years, it is important that all relevant infrastructure projects are incorporated into the TYNDP. ENTSOG has endeavoured to run an open and transparent data collection process, and actively encouraged project promoters to submit their projects.
As the submission of comprehensive project data is a critical prerequisite for the infrastructure analysis, ENTSOG provides a Project Data Portal open to all project promoters to support the process.
Only projects actively (re)submitted by promoters through the Project Data Portal have been considered in this edition of the TYNDP. This process ensures transparency and non-discrimination between projects. Ahead of the submission phase, to better support project promoters, ENTSOG provided a documentation kit 2 with a handbook on how to use the Project Data Portal and organised dedicated webinars for project promoters.
In order to increase transparency and accuracy of the information and to facilitate coordination among promoters, the ENTSOG Project Data Portal offers promoters capacity monitoring interfaces. This allows project promoters to actively monitor their submission through specific reports and check the final capacity value resulting from the application of the “lesser-of-rule”3. Additionally, in order to ensure a more careful consistency check on submitted projects data, during the TYNDP 2020 project data collection, ENTSOG had a loop with ACER and National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs). Promoters were informed on the comments provided by ACER and NRAs and allowed to amend the information provided during the project data collection if deemed necessary. The same information was also shared with the European Commission.
When submitting projects, the promoters commit to report accurate and up-to-date information. In very few instances ENTSOG has directly undertaken corrective actions in line with pre-defined rules. Furthermore, for a given project, the related TYNDP code is assigned automatically by the Project Data Portal when the project is first submitted. Updates of the project in future TYNDPs are handled by the promoter under the same project code. This allows using the project code as another key for the monitoring of projects along the different TYNDP editions and for the PCI selection process.
To ensure as much consistency as possible, ENTSOG encouraged promoters intending to resubmit projects already part of the TYNDP 2018 to update the already existing information while keeping the same TYNDP project code. In this way it has been possible to better link the different TYNDP editions and monitor the project evolution.
Promoters were also requested to provide comprehensive information including detailed project implementation scheduling (section 5.5) and estimated costs (section 5.6).
The project submission phase took place from 30 May 2019 to 28 June 2019. The submission phase was followed by a check and validation phase (from 1 July 2019 to 26 July 2019) where both ENTSOG and promoters could verify and amend the submitted information. This TYNDP reflects therefore the project status as of July 2019. As already mentioned, in this period ENTSOG had also a loop with ACER and National Regulatory Authorities that supported ENTSOG in checking the submitted information.
In addition to the regular submission phase, ENTSOG organized two dedicated project collection windows for Energy Transition projects (26 – 29 August, 2019 and 15 May – 15 June, 2020) so as to facilitate the relevant promoters the necessary opportunities to submit their ETR projects for TYNDP 2020.
1 Gas Infrastructure Europe.
2 https://www.entsog.eu/sites/default/files/2019-05/Project%20Submission%20Handbook%20%286%29.zip
3 The “lesser-of-rule” means that, on a Point with Entry and Exit capacities, the minimum of the two values will be considered as the firm capacity available for use. Example: Promoter A submits an Exit capacity on Point P in the value of 100. Promoter B submits an Entry capacity on the other side of the Point P, in the value of 200. After the application of the rule, the firm capacity considered for modelling will be 100.
3.1Difference with ENTSOG Transparency Platform
Regulation (EC) No. 715/2009 and its amendments require ENTSOG to provide a Union-wide platform where all Transmission System Operators for gas shall make their relevant data publicly available.
The Transparency Platform provides technical and commercial data on gas transmission systems, which include interconnection points and connections with storages, LNG facilities, distribution networks, final consumers and production facilities.
The platform is available on web address: https://transparency.entsog.eu where the interested parties are able to access valuable information uploaded by all TSOs.
Capacities data collected and used for TYNDP might differ from the capacity data published on the ENTSOG Transparency Platform for the three main following reasons:
- though the modelling mostly uses the ENTSOG Transparency Platform topology, in some cases the topology used in the TYNDP differs from the latter. This is to better serve simulations purposes;
- both existing capacity and project capacities are not constantly updated during the TYNDP process but have a specific time stamp (1 January 2019 for existing infrastructure while for projects the closure day of the data collection);
- capacities are modelled in the TYNDP after the application of the Lesser-of-Rule.