Austria's New Regulators Take the Helm: Update

(Updates with details throughout)

Austrian gas and power regulator E-Control said March 29 that Wolfgang Urbantschitsch and Andreas Eigenbauer took over as its joint managing directors four days earlier.

Urbantschitsch was previously head of its legal department while Eigenbauer was in charge of energy for the City of Vienna. They were appointed in February by economy and energy minister Reinhold Mitterlehner for five years, a term that can be renewed once. They replace Walter Boltz and Martin Graf whose period as joint managing directors ended this month. Boltz headed the regulator since 2001, while Graf was paired with him in 2011.

According to Viennese newspaper Wiener Zeitung, Boltz admitted that he only learned that he was leaving E-Control from the media. The paper added that Mitterlehner had said the changeover would "lay new foundations", but that Boltz and Graf had criticized Austria's current funding system for green electricity and thus irked farmers, and that the duo set up an anonymous 'whistleblower' platform to report price-fixing which irked power producers.

Boltz was reappointed in May 2015 as vice-chair of the board of regulators (BoR) at the Ljubljana-based Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (Acer) for a two and a half year term. However Acer informed NGE on March 30 that Boltz stepped down at Acer's last BoR meeting on March 15-16, before the expiry of his term, and that his position is currently vacant and to be filled at the BoR on April 27.

This updates a March 29 version of this NGE report which incorrectly said that Boltz remained vice-chairman of Acer.

Acer further notes that its BoR is composed of representatives of national regulators. However such representatives do not have to be serving national regulatory chiefs, as is the case for John Mogg who stepped down as chairman of the UK's Ofgem in 2013 but continues to chair Acer's BoR.

Boltz had been a seasoned observer of EU energy markets. Three years ago at a conference in Vienna, he told delegates: "If you burn gas in a power plant, you burn money. If you burn coal in a power plant, you make money."  

Mark Smedley