ebIX Forum formally decided at their meeting May 30 to close down ebIX by the end of 2023
October 5, 2023
The reasons being:
- When in the last decade of the previous century and the first decade of this century the energy markets were liberalised, it became clear that a well-functioning market had to be based not only on law and market rules but also on electronic information exchange. Soon ETSO (predecessor of ENTSO-E) was founded taking care of this for TSO’s in Europe. But this made it even more evident that for the customer side of the market such an organisation was dearly missing. An initiative by representatives from the by then liberalised national markets lead to the founding of ebIX® in 2002, just to fill this gap with focus on the electronic information exchange and its requirements for as long as the ebIX® presence was going to be needed. However, ebIX® never became a formally accepted body from the EU side.
- With the start of EU DSO Entity, ebIX® holds the position that this gap is finally filled in a more formal way with an EU mandate. Thereby making it possible for ebIX® (conform its early intentions) to close down and handover its results achieved over the years to the formal body representing the European downstream energy market.
- Having two bodies representing the European downstream energy market related to data exchange standardisation would be inefficient and member states may have problems finding enough resources and focus. Having two bodies may also result in contra-productive competition.
The ebIX® Forum is in a process to hand over the ebIX® work and knowledge to the EU DSO Entity and the Joint working group between the EU DSO Entity and ENTSO-E for further development and maintenance. This includes the ebIX® reference model, ebIX® BRSs, etc.