The Federal Network Agency has published its draft decision on the adjustment of calculated service lives and depreciation modalities for natural gas pipeline infrastructures (KANU 2.0). This decision supports the regulatory transformation of the gas network. With KANU 2.0, the depreciation modalities for gas network operators nationwide will be largely flexible. The background is the expectation that with decreasing user numbers, costs will not decrease proportionally. Without the proposed adjustment, remaining users would have to bear increasingly higher charges over time.
By flexibilizing the depreciation modalities, network operators can now distribute costs over the next years and decades until 2045 in such a way that as many customers as possible can bear them. This prevents customers who exit natural gas usage more slowly than others from having to bear excessively high burdens at the end of the transformation process. At the same time, the draft decision ensures that network operators can continue to amortize their necessary investments in the natural gas networks. The guidelines take into account the heterogeneity of the networks.
The draft decision allows network operators significantly shorter service lives than before. Parts of the gas networks can be depreciated until 2035 in exceptional cases, and generally until 2045. Additionally, declining-balance depreciation with a rate of up to 12% is permitted. This is to adjust the depreciation to the future declining sales volumes. This allows network operators to largely amortize their investments and secure their economic performance for the transformation process.
Implementation Starting in 2025
The new depreciation modalities are expected to be applied to network charges starting in 2025. However, network operators are not obligated to apply the regulations at a specific time. For example, they can wait for the adoption of municipal heat planning before switching depreciation modalities. Faster depreciations generally come with higher charges in the early phase of the gas network transformation. These charges strongly depend on the regional implementation of the heat transition. The Federal Network Agency, however, expects a moderate increase in charges.
The importance of natural gas will already decrease in many sectors in the medium term. Although a significant decline in gas connections is not yet noticeable, it is already foreseeable that there will be highly different regional needs and uses of the gas networks. A significant portion of the natural gas network will no longer be used beyond 2045. Some countries and municipalities are planning an even faster exit from gas supply. Parts of the transmission network and occasionally the distribution network will be used for hydrogen transport. The remaining part of the network will be decommissioned.
