| Feature - CEER’s 3D Strategy and 2019 Work Programme
A major highlight of 2018 was the development of CEER’s “3D” strategic policy objectives, covering the three years from 2019 to 2021. As regulators’ primary concern is with protecting the public interest, consumers are at the very core of CEER’s 3D strategy. Following a public consultation, CEER’s 3D strategy was finalised and published along with our Evaluation of Responses to our public consultation. CEER thanks the various organisations for their input to the process. CEER’s 3D Strategy (for 2019-2021) is focused on:
• Digitalisation in the consumer interest;
• Decarbonisation at least cost; and
• Dynamic Regulation. Furthermore, the 3D strategy includes a set of new CEER agreed values of Cooperation, Evidence, Expertise and Respect.  Digitalisation in the consumer interest
CEER’s digitalisation objective is to:
• Foster competitive European markets that protect and empower consumers;
• Enable cost-savings for consumers using digitalisation with a whole energy system approach;
• Ensure an agile regulatory framework enables innovation while ensuring a level playing field; and
• Strengthen cooperation among sectoral regulators, consumer protection authorities, etc. to ensure consumers are protected as traditional energy markets are reinvented. Decarbonisation at least cost
Regulators advocate strongly that energy decarbonisation must be achieved at least cost to consumers. This can be done by:
• Developing an energy market design that minimises the need for subsidy mechanisms; and
• Minimising the whole energy system cost of decarbonisation, in both the gas and electricity sectors, while maintaining a high level of security of supply. Dynamic regulation
CEER is determined to make regulation agile and coherent in responding to digitalisation and decarbonisation, where European energy consumers’ interests are forefront in our approach. We see that regulation must be stable but not static. 2019 Work Programme
CEER’s 3D Strategy will be implemented through CEER’s annual work programme. Check out our 2019 Work Programme for deliverables under each of the 3Ds. For example, in setting digitalisation in the consumer interest as a strategic objective, CEER plans (inter alia) to publish a digitalisation public consultation paper in March 2019 which will examine the impacts of digitalisation in the energy sector and the role of energy regulators to help ensure that consumers benefit from it. Our follow-on work from the 2018 Future Role of Gas study is a further illustration of how gas can deliver on the decarbonisation part of the 3D strategy. | 
