Cross-Border Energy Trading Legislation Further Liberalized

The past decade has witnessed a giant leap forward in the Turkish energy sector since the 2001 enactment of the Energy Market Law. Both the government and the relevant supervisory authority, the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (the "EMRA"), have been actively working to find legislative methods for gradually transforming the energy sector into a more investor- and trader-friendly business environment. This is especially the case for the domestic energy trade, the latest steps of which introduced the day-ahead market, a radical decrease in eligible consumer consumption thresholds from 100,000 kW to 30,000 kW annually (with the hint of even further decreases), and retailer licenses made available to all eligible license-holders (replacing the previous exclusivity for distributors). All of these have come to fruition in 2011.