Jointly organised by ESMIG and E.DSO, the webinar “Is EU regulation supporting the cyber revolution for the energy sector?'' took place on Tuesday, 16 May 2023. Fostering an interactive exchange, the webinar provided insight into current cybersecurity legislation, focussing on further developments and how it could be streamlined to avoid overlaps with other European legislation, and increased costs.
For this webinar, ESMIG and E.DSO were joined by representatives from DG Energy and DG Connect from the European Commission, as well as Gridspertise, T&D Europe and Fluvius, highlighting the fundamental impact that cybersecurity legislation has on the energy sector and utility industry.
Luis Goncalves, President of ESMIG, and Anne van der Molen, Vice-Chair of EDSO Technology and Knowledge Sharing Committee, underlined the importance of cybersecurity and related legislation in the digital transformation of the energy industry and the contribution of their respective Organisations to the process. “Cybersecurity is a key element. We must accelerate and build infrastructure that is secure and sustainable but that also provides real data to stakeholders”, stated Luis Goncalves.
Michaela Kollau, Team Leader on Cybersecurity at DG Energy, and Maika Fohrenbach, Policy officer, Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy at DG Connect highlighted the EC ongoing work by stressing the different nature of Cybersecurity legislation, like the ‘Cyber Resilience Act proposal’ and the ‘Network Code on Cybersecurity’. They underlined efforts to develop harmonised policies and legislation, taking into account the specificalities of the energy sector and avoiding gaps and overlaps. Michaela Kollau stressed the fact that ‘the Network Code specifies measures in a coordinated way with industry contribution and the outcome is ready to be used by different competent authorities’.
The panel discussion, moderated by Tomás Llobet, Managing Director of ESMIG, deep-dived into the webinar topics by underlying the importance of security and the specific role of cooperation between manufactures and operators. Issues discussed included aligning political objectives and technical requirements on cybersecurity at EU level, avoiding overlaps and reducing potentially high regulatory compliance costs.
Roberto Zangrandi, Secretary General of E.DSO and Willem Strabbing, Technical Director of ESMIG, closed the webinar and summarised key takeaways. They thanked for EC for their commitment to ensure the matching of innovation and transformation in the legislative process as well as to keep open dialogue with stakeholders.
ESMIG and E.DSO would like to sincerely thank speakers and panellists for their great contribution to the success of the webinar, as well as the more than 100 online participants that joined.
If you missed the webinar, you can watch it here. The slides presented at the event are available here.
About ESMIG
ESMIG is the European association of smart energy solution providers. Our members, ranging from small to multinational companies, develop and manufacture devices, information technologies and services for multi-commodity metering, display and management of energy production and consumption.
About E.DSO
E.DSO is the key interface between Europe’s Distribution System Operators (DSOs) and the European institutions. E.DSO gathers 35 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.
