We met Charles Esser, Secretary General at European Distribution System Operators (E.DSO)
E.DSO is the key interface between Europe’s Distribution System Operators (DSOs) and the European institutions. E.DSO gathers 36 leading electricity DSOs in 19 countries, including 2 national associations, cooperating to ensure the reliability of Europe’s electricity supply for consumers and enabling their active participation in our energy system.
Ben Lane:
I am the event manager of the Critical Infrastructure Protection & Resilience Europe (CIPRE) Conference. The next event is in Madrid in November (12-14). We are going to talk today about you and why you are here, and then, we’re going to talk a little bit about E.DSO and some of the broad tasks that you have as an association in relation to your members and your wider work outside your members.
Charles Esser:
Certainly. I’m glad to be here and glad that E.DSO is involved in CIPRE.
Ben Lane:
Tell us a little about yourself, Charles, just a short recap on your career and how you’ve ended up in this position as Secretary General of E.DSO.
Charles Esser:
I started at E.DSO as Secretary General at the end of last year, in December. Before that, I worked on the regulatory side. So, I worked for the Regulators Association in Europe, CEER. And there, I was Secretary General for four and a half years. And before that, I worked for that association on distribution system operators and on retail energy markets. So, I’ve been in the Brussels association area for about seven years.
I previously worked at the International Energy Agency and as a self-employed consultant. Before that, I worked for an NGO think tank, in energy analysis, but it was more on the political aspects of the sector. And so, here I am. For me, it is interesting to move from the regulatory side to working directly for an association of regulated utilities.
Ben Lane:
So, there’s a transition point in your career; you went from the regulatory side to the association side. Maybe that’s a good place to start to introduce why you made that change and what your role now is, specifically at E.DSO.
Charles Esser:
When I worked for the Regulators Association, previous to being Secretary General, I worked on DSOs. So instead of advocating for regulators’ concerns, I change to advocating for regulated companies’ concern. However, I think that both regulators and regulated companies agree that distribution system operators are working in the public interest, they are natural monopolies, and so, they understand that they need to be regulated and that there are restrictions on things that they can do, compared to a purely competitive company.
Also, there are a lot of things to do running an effective Brussels-based association that are similar, no matter what the area. So, I think those are things that have been a naturally easy transition. And I think we’re at a phase now where distribution system operators, or grids more generally, are seen as vital to the energy transition. I’m excited to have made the change and I feel like it’s important to have a regulatory presence in Brussels and a presence of the regulated companies to get the kind of good policies that we all want from Brussels.
Ben Lane:
Now, you are working as Secretary General for E.DSO. You’ve got some tasks. I’m sure there were some big tasks on your desk when you first arrived. Maybe explore some of those tasks and roles and responsibilities that you have as an association now and what you need to do to represent your members correctly. What is your day-to-day role?
Charles Esser:
I manage a secretariat of about nine people. One of the things we do is advocacy. It’s about making our voice heard in Brussels. It’s about working with other associations that have similar views or even interacting with associations that may have different views and trying to persuade them or understand their point of view. I spend part of my time thinking and working with our policy and regulation committee to make sure we have solid defensible positions on different pieces of legislation. We are at a phase where our members will have to implement European legislation. Some of it may need to be transposed and, of course, that’s a job for the legislature in the Member State.
It’s also about looking for ways to cooperate and push forward our views or cooperate with other DSO associations or with associations representing other related industries in the energy sector.
We, as electricity-only DSOs, strongly support electrification and continued electrification and working towards the targets that have been set in National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs).
I think another vital part of E.DSO’s work is European projects that we participate in, like the Horizon programme, but also sometimes from other programmes, like Erasmus. And so, we directly participate in consortia, and we usually have at least one or two of our members participate in the same consortium with us. In that way we can diffuse the knowledge from these projects to our members. We often have a dissemination role because we are an association, rather than just one DSO. But sometimes, we also carry out more technical tasks within consortium.
We have a committee that discusses and looks at those projects. We try to look ahead at projects that we might want to apply for. And we also play a role in knowledge sharing between our members. I should say that as distribution system operators are natural monopolies, our members don’t compete among themselves. This allows for a great deal of knowledge sharing between our members on all kinds of topics.
And indeed, the topic perhaps of interest most to CIPRE is that we have a task force within our technology and knowledge sharing committee on cybersecurity, and they work on sharing knowledge on the latest developments in cybersecurity, best practices and thinking about the levels of investment needed. As regulated companies, of course investment levels are approved by the regulator, so this is part of the ongoing discussion.
Ben Lane:
You touched on the point in terms of security and in terms of the CIPRE event, which is our topic here so what are the key items now, in terms of the transposition to NIS2 that maybe is keeping you awake at night?
Charles Esser:
As the transposition continues, our members have looked at the topic and certainly thought about some issues that should be brought to the attention, in terms of transposition and what happens after transposition. And so, I would say there are a few things. One is, as we have implementation, we may need an ever more transverse kind of skillset in operators such as compliance experts, risk management.
We need more intense cooperation from different internal departments fostered by top management that defines compliance and with external regulators who attest to compliance. We also may have different views on what are operators of essential services. These may vary from member state to member state, and the threshold can be different or the criteria, so that’s something to manage, and particularly there’ll be some heterogeneity within Europe, and so, we’ll need to adopt a very global approach. That means going beyond just the electricity sector and moving into other sectors.
We think NIS2 will have a very large perimeter; we’ve seen many thousands of entities concerned by the directive. We think another issue too is that there are other pieces of legislation that are related to NIS2 such as Network Code on Cybersecurity, the Critical Entity Resilience Directive, etc. that must be considered in implementation. Another essential question is, how will all levels of the supply chain cope with increased security standards? This is a concern. For DSOs, how do our members really function in this new landscape? That’s an interesting point for us. Also, as regulated companies, the tariff does not define exactly how much spending there should be on cybersecurity, so how do we communicate to the regulator exactly how much spending there should be on cybersecurity, how to defend that, how to make sure that the regulator understands everything that’s involved with that? Perhaps we need some kind of cost model, but that’s still to be discussed.
Ben Lane:
Thank you. I think the last thing you wanted to talk about was your upcoming Cybersecurity Event.
Charles Esser:
This year’s E.DSO is co-organising the seventh edition of our Cybersecurity Forum. It is organized by us and the European Energy Information Sharing and Analysis Centre, EE-ISAC, the European Network for Cybersecurity, ENCS, and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, ENISA. This event will take place in Brussels on the 1st of October 2024. It will be in person only. We will be looking at questions such as, how can European regulations on cybersecurity be developed in a harmonized way? I talked a little bit about that just now. Also, under discussion is how we manage risks, avoid gaps, overlaps, and what’s expected from different stakeholders in cybersecurity. How can resilience be assured? Resilience is a really important issue for us as DSOs, whether it’s climate change or cybersecurity, and ensuring that kind of resilience is important. It’s important to the grid, important to keep the lights on. It’s important to competitiveness globally. So, we’re excited to hold this forum on the 1st of October, and we cordially invite interested people to register to attend at: https://www.edsoforsmartgrids.eu/events/e-dso-ee-isac-encs-enisa-7th-cybersecurity-forum-from-theory-to-practice-how-do-we-get-it-right-how-do-we-get-it-right-in-time/
Ben Lane:
That’s a great roundup. See you in October at your event in Brussels, and CIPRE 2024 in Madrid.