On 30 June 2026, CEN and CENELEC participated in the Distributed Flexibility in Practice workshop, organized by the Pentalateral Forum in Brussels. During the event, the Coordination Group on the All-Electric Society (CoG AES) presented the role of technical standardization as a key enabler for Europe’s energy transition.
As Europe accelerates its shift towards electrification and decentralized energy systems, standards play a critical role in ensuring interoperability, grid stability, and market integration. The Coordination Group's presentation highlighted how CEN and CENELEC are developing the frameworks needed to support distributed energy resources, demand-side flexibility, and seamless coordination across sectors.
A key message of the presentation was that effective coordination is essential to ensure that European standardization supports the energy transition in a coherent and consistent way. The Coordination Group on the All-Electric Society aims to align the activities of CEN, CENELEC and ETSI and to strengthen collaboration between the relevant technical committees and initiatives. The presentation also highlighted the importance of maintaining alignment with IEC standards to promote global interoperability and avoid fragmentation. Finally, it was emphasized that standards alone are not sufficient to deliver successful outcomes; testing, validation and conformity assessment must be considered from the earliest stages of development and deployment.
There is still a valuable opportunity to strengthen interoperability before flexibility solutions are deployed at scale across Europe. To make the most of this opportunity, standardization should remain flexible and technology-neutral, providing a framework that supports innovation rather than limiting it. Early alignment among utilities, industry, aggregators and technology providers will be essential to avoid market fragmentation and reduce future integration costs. When applied effectively, standardization can help accelerate convergence across the energy ecosystem, enabling a more efficient and coordinated energy transition.
This engagement underscores CEN and CENELEC's commitment to supporting Europe's climate and energy goals through timely, consensus-based standardization.
Europe already has much of the standards base for flexibility, but success now depends on cross-committee coordination, better interoperability in implementation, and using standardization as a flexible enabler rather than a rigid constraint.
Find out more about the Coordination Group on the All-Electric Society and our work in the energy sector.