AUCEL Energy Seminars: Inevitable Convergence between EU Energy and ICT Sector Regulation: Security and Reliability of Electronic Communications as an Example

AUCEL Energy Seminars: Inevitable Convergence between EU Energy and ICT Sector Regulation: Security and Reliability of Electronic Communications as an Example
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AUCEL Energy Seminar Series Winter-Spring 2021

Inevitable convergence between EU energy and ICT sector regulation: Security and reliability of electronic communications as an example.

Electronic communications sector is dependent on power supply, and power outages are one of the common causes of service interruptions both for mobile and fixed electronic communications.  Although power cuts caused only 15% of reported incidents in the European Union in 2018, they resulted in 50% of the total lost user hours.  

The possibilities the countries have when it comes to resilience against power cuts can be roughly divided into three levels of security, labeled as Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3.  Level 1 aims at preventing the incident from occurring in the first place, or, as the second-best outcome, at minimizing the number of incidents and the severity of their impact. If the measures implemented under this level are successful, the incident never occurs and there is no need to proceed to Levels 2 and 3, both of which refer to the mitigation of the incident’s consequences. 

Most countries would typically choose some mix of the three security levels, but the exact mix depends on the country and market specifics and preferences. The responsibility of the measures at level 1 aimed at preventing power supply incidents would typically fall on the energy sector, and therefore largely outside of the scope of the electronic communications sector. In contrast, the measures under levels 2 and 3 are either exclusively in the domain of the electronic communications or require a cooperation between the sectors.

Based on this illustrative case study, the paper makes a case regarding the growing and inevitable convergence of the electronic communications and energy sectoral regulatory regimes.

Speaker
Anna Butenko (Speaker Anna Butenko (Senior Research Fellow, Institute For Energy and the Environment, Vermont Law School)
Hosted by
Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law
Venue
MS Teams (see below)
Contact

Daria Shapovalova (dshapovalova@abdn.ac.uk)

 

MS Teams link - Click here to join the meeting