Dir. 2026-83 Framtidens Elnätsavgifter och Tvånivåindelning (2026)

Kommittédirektiv 2026:83 — “Framtidens elnätsavgifter och indelning på två nivåer av elnäten i Sverige.” Decided at a government meeting on 23 July 2026 (Klimat- och näringslivsdepartementet). Appoints a special investigator (särskild utredare) to propose a fit-for-purpose regulation of Swedish grid fees (elnätsavgifter), covering four discrete revenue-cap questions plus a structural investigation into restructuring Sweden’s three-level grid (lokal/region/stamnät) into the EU’s two-level model (distribution/transmission system) and whether the number of small Swedish DSOs should be reduced. Reporting deadline: 24 November 2027.

Legal-compliance constraint: proposals must be consistent with regeringsformen and the ECHR (lagen 1994:1219).

Why it exists — the backdrop

Swedish elnätsavgifter have risen sharply over the past 15 years, at a rate far outpacing CPI. The directive frames this in stark terms: the increases have produced unreasonable profits for a comparatively risk-free monopoly business and an unreasonably heavy burden on the customer collective, harming Swedish firms’ international competitiveness, eroding consumer purchasing power, and undermining policy reforms. A parallel structural problem: SOU 2023:64 (Ett förändrat regelverk för framtidens el- och gasnät, pp. 236–238) found that customers likely cannot appeal Ei’s revenue-cap (intäktsram) decisions — only DSOs can — leaving DSOs a one-sided incentive to appeal (nothing to lose) while customers have no comparable check.

Note the relationship to already-decided reform: the revenue-cap provisions move from ellagen (1997:857) to the new Elmarknadslagen on 1 January 2027 without substantive change relevant to this mandate (per prop. 2025/26:240, bet. 2025/26:NU25, rskr. 2025/26:386) — the underlying rules stay the same, only their statutory home moves, and Ei gains greater latitude to set detail via föreskrifter/individual decisions rather than legislated detail. Dir. 2026:83 is a second, distinct inquiry layered on top of that reform and its immediate predecessor Prop. 2025/26:26 (which resulted from SOU 2023:64 and took effect on capital-cost/kapitalbas questions) — it revisits adjacent revenue-cap questions SOU 2023:64 raised but Prop. 2025/26:26 left unresolved or rejected.

Four revenue-cap questions

1. Return on investment (avkastning på investeringar)

Ei currently sets a single kalkylränta (discount rate) per revenue-cap decision meant to give a reasonable return on the capital required to run the business — but a too-generic model risks either under-rewarding equity-financed investment (making it unattractive) or over-rewarding relative to what’s needed to service debt-financed investment, effectively over-compensating DSOs at customers’ expense. The utredare must analyse whether a more flexible regime, better matched to a DSO’s actual capital structure (equity vs. debt), is warranted, and propose legislative text.

2. Appeal rules (överklagandebestämmelser)

Today only DSOs can meaningfully appeal Ei’s revenue-cap decisions (courts have found customers likely lack standing); appeals are decided line-item by line-item, so a DSO can ratchet the cap upward across several appealed items without any court ever assessing whether the aggregate resulting cap is reasonable. A DSO that did not itself appeal can also seek a review (omprövning) and get an uplift if another DSO won a comparable point in court — so gains ratchet sector-wide while nothing pulls the other way. 1 Jan 2027 already brings a new rule (9 kap. 8 § elmarknadslagen) that the revenue cap must not exceed what the DSO actually needs for its grid business — which may itself bear on the reasonableness question. The utredare must analyse and propose a new appeal/omprövning framework that gives more weight to the customer perspective and the aggregate reasonableness of the cap (not just individual disputed line items), and separately consider, without preconceptions, whether customers’ right to appeal should itself be clarified/established.

3. Rollover of prior shortfalls (överrullning) and interim reconciliation

Where a DSO under-bills its revenue cap in one four-year tillsynsperiod, current law (5 kap. 29 § ellagen; from 1 Jan 2027, 9 kap. 23 § elmarknadslagen) lets it recover the shortfall in the following period — see överrullning. The directive questions whether a regime allowing this kind of deferred billing of past costs is really compatible with the EU-law requirement that charges be set in advance, and flags that the nature of the customer collective’s “claim” against a future period is unclear. The utredare must analyse whether överrullning should be restricted, and separately consider introducing more frequent interim reconciliations (delavstämningar, e.g. after every calendar year) within a tillsynsperiod so DSOs and Ei get earlier visibility into the running revenue-cap position rather than waiting for the four-year mark. (Note the directional contrast with SOU 2023:64, which had proposed extending överrullning to two periods — a proposal Prop. 2025/26:26 already rejected in October 2025; Dir. 2026:83 asks whether to tighten the mechanism, not loosen it.)

4. Cap on fee increases (tak för höjningar)

Historically, average revenue-cap increases have in some tillsynsperioder been very high, letting DSOs raise customer charges sharply over a short period. Because caps’ detail now sits with Ei rather than in legislation, neither the Riksdag nor the government can directly constrain how large an increase Ei’s methodology produces. The directive cites Finland’s comparable regime, which caps annual elnätsavgift increases at 8% relative to the preceding twelve months. The utredare must analyse and propose whether Sweden should introduce a similar cap, and over what period (e.g. twelve months).

Two-level grid restructuring and DSO consolidation

The core proposal: collapse three Swedish grid levels into the EU’s two

Sweden has historically organised its grid into three levels — stam-/transmissionsnät, regionnät, lokalnät — while EU regulation is built around two: överföringssystem (transmission system) and distributionssystem (distribution system). The new elmarknadslag already introduces the two EU-aligned system-responsible roles (systemansvarig för distributionssystem, systemansvarig för överföringssystem); under that split the distribution-system operator becomes responsible for both lokalnät and regionnät, while the transmission-system operator covers only stamnätet. In EU terms, 40–130 kV regionnät lines are considered part of the distribution system; only higher-voltage regional lines read as part of the transmission system. Svenska kraftnät, as systemansvarig för överföringssystem, today has rådighet (control) only over lines at 220 kV and 400 kV — narrower than most European TSO counterparts.

The directive floats one concrete mechanism: Svk could use its accumulated flaskhalsinkomster (congestion income) — which EU rules require it to spend first on debottlenecking and only secondarily on lowering its own charges — to buy out and take over operation of higher-voltage regional lines, extending its överföringssystem and moving Sweden toward the standard EU two-level structure. The utredare must investigate the feasibility, costs, and legal obstacles of such a Svk takeover, and separately determine where the voltage boundary between distribution and transmission system should sit — noting the EU sets no fixed threshold, and that Sweden’s 2021-introduced nätkoncession för område for regionnät already carries individual min/max voltage bounds per Ei decision, which should act as a floor for any new boundary. The directive also flags that current law (lag 2011:710) restricts 220 kV+ lines to a single certified transmissionsnätsföretag, a rule that would need review under a two-level restructuring, and that a wide swath of existing regulation currently assumes three levels and would need adapting.

DSO consolidation

Separately, the directive asks whether Swedish grid operation is conducted in the most efficient way to meet energy-policy goals, citing structural context from ACER’s report Managing the ramp-up of electricity distribution investments to better serve grid users: across the EU, roughly 8% of distribution customers are served by a DSO with fewer than 100,000 customers; in Sweden and Finland alone, that figure exceeds 35%. Sweden has only six DSOs serving more than 100,000 customers each, out of its full complement of small, often municipally-owned, companies. The utredare must analyse how a consolidation and reduction in the number of small DSOs could be enabled and carried out cost-effectively, alongside the broader efficiency question, referencing the energy-policy direction set in prop. 2023/24:105 (leveranssäkerhet, competitive prices, harmonised/efficient/non-discriminatory grid access).

Relevance to existing wiki content

• RP5 Revenue Cap Methodology (2028–2031) — the four revenue-cap sub-questions (avkastning, överklagande, överrullning, tak) are a direct sequel to the SOU 2023:64 / Prop. 2025/26:26 legislative history already documented there
• Överrullning — this directive reopens the question Prop. 2025/26:26 just settled, from the opposite direction (restriction, not extension)
• Svenska kraftnät — potential expansion of Svk’s överföringssystem scope beyond 220/400 kV, funded by flaskhalsinkomster
• Electric Grid Structure — the proposed collapse of Sweden’s three-level grid into the EU’s two-level distribution/transmission model
• Swedish DSO Landscape — the DSO-count/consolidation question, with fresh ACER comparative statistics
• Small DSO Capacity — The Binding Constraint on Swedish Flexibility Policy — consolidation, previously described there as slow and organic, is now the subject of an explicit government policy inquiry
• Elmarknadslagen — the new law’s distributionssystem/överföringssystem role split is the immediate trigger for the two-level restructuring question