Rafael Gómez-Elvira: "We need more Europe and more market"

15.10.2025

On October 9th in Vienna, Energy Club brought together leading experts, regulators, investors, and innovators for the forum “Balancing Europe’s Energy System: Challenges, Solutions, and Prospects.” The event served as an intellectual platform for discussing the most pressing issues—how to ensure the stability, security, and efficiency of the energy system amid a profound market transformation.

A Forum on Key Challenges and Solutions

The event participants focused on two main blocks:

1. Today’s Challenges:

• Technical difficulties faced by European system operators.
• An analysis of the causes of recent power supply disruptions.
• The limitations of traditional balancing methods and the complexities of scaling up demand response.

2. Tomorrow’s Solutions:

• The development of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).
• The role of artificial intelligence and digital platforms in optimizing energy systems.
• The formation of new market models that fairly value flexibility and stimulate pan-European cooperation.
• The implementation of innovations—from “digital inertia” to Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technologies.

“More Europe, More Market”

Among the key speakers was Rafael Gómez-Elvira, Director of Communications and Marketing at OMI Group and Chair of the EU NEMO Committee. He emphasized that the main goal of NEMO is to ensure the effective integration of Europe’s energy markets.

“We need more Europe and more market. More Europe means greater integration, less fragmentation. This is the key to survival in the current geopolitical reality. And more market means that instead of endless regulation, we need to let the market work,” he stated.

According to Gómez-Elvira, excessive centralization could become a trap for Europe: “Politicians often confuse integration with centralization. But true integration is decentralized cooperation, where different control centers work in sync. In a world of decentralization, trying to centralize everything is a mistake.”

The NEMO Report and Market Performance Results

The speaker presented the NEMO Committee’s annual report for 2024, which covers 25 EU countries and Norway. It details the functioning of the single electricity market, integration mechanisms, and the performance of the Euphemia system algorithm, which ensures the efficiency of market operations.

The European model involves a combination of continuous intraday trading and regional auctions. Since June 2024, the system has been operating in a new format that allows for:

• Increased market liquidity.
• The creation of added social welfare, which now exceeds €11 billion per session.
• A reduction in the time to the first decisions, thanks to the introduction of a 15-minute market interval.

“We have never faced an outage due to algorithm failures, and all incidents last year were localized. Today, we are confidently moving towards a more flexible, faster, and more transparent market,” emphasized Gómez-Elvira.

A Look into the Future

Among the strategic development directions, he highlighted three priorities:

1. Geographical Expansion — engaging the Energy Community countries in the common market.
2. Deepening Decentralization — creating an integrated, but not centralized, management system.
3. Continuous Operational Improvement — developing co-optimization and enhancing short-term market mechanisms.

Speaker also specifically addressed the prospects for reforming the EU’s market design: “The reform will not destroy the spot market—on the contrary, it strengthens it. The next step is to create a liquid long-term market that will allow Europeans to effectively hedge their risks. The example of Spain, where bilateral contracts and PPAs are actively developing, shows that this approach works.”

Rafael Gómez-Elvira’s speech in Vienna became a powerful message in support of the European integration of energy markets and market-based mechanisms for the industry’s development. His position is a call for smart liberalization, decentralized governance, and technological modernization as the foundation of Europe’s energy resilience.