14 Additional notes to the consolidated financial statements

If our regulated revenue in any year exceeds the permitted revenue determined by the regulatory authority, we must offset the surplus revenue in subsequent years by charging lower tariffs, as determined by the regulatory system in the Netherlands and Germany. In 2022, our actual regulated income was substantially higher than the cap set by the Dutch and German regulatory authorities, largely due to developments in the gas market following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The increase in income in 2022 was partly offset by higher energy costs in that year. We are allowed to settle the higher energy costs as well.

Under the applicable reporting standards, we were not allowed to recognise future settlements as a liability in the balance sheet in 2022 nor deduct them from our 2022 revenue or result. We may only recognise any settlement of regulated revenue in the year in which the settlement actually takes place. The surplus revenue for the 2022 financial year was largely settled in the 2024 financial year. Accordingly, the permitted revenue in 2024 was, in line with our expectations, substantially lower than in previous years in which such large settlements did not occur. The excess energy costs from 2022 were also settled in 2024. Because the revenue we needed to settle in 2024 was considerably higher than the costs to be settled, the operating result was around € 400 million lower compared to our long-term average (underlying) operating result of around € 500 million. The underlying result is the result corrected for past and future regulated settlements.

For more information on the development of the revenue and result see notes ‎3 ‘Financial information by operating segment’ and ‎30 ‘Net revenue’. We explain the difference between our IFRS results and our underlying results in more detail under ‘Key financial figures’ in our management report.

It is our social duty to be able to serve society with our infrastructure no matter which scenario materialises. An in-depth elaboration of these scenarios is presented in the Integrated Infrastructure Survey 2030-2050 (II3050). The key conclusions from the II3050 report for us are:

• Hydrogen, biomethane, heat and CCS are key elements in bringing about a carbon-neutral future. 
• After 2030, the hydrogen network planned to be built between now and 2030 will approximately double in size. Our existing gas infrastructure can largely accommodate this expansion. 
• The storage of hydrogen is essential if we are to keep the supply and demand for energy in balance in the future. This can be done in abandoned salt caverns in the Netherlands and Germany. 
• The CCS network is not only a short-term solution: it will serve us in the long term too. In the short term, we will transport captured CO₂ to offshore storage fields to reduce industrial carbon emissions. In the long term, we will transport sustainable CO₂ for production processes that are currently still based on fossil resources.

Gasunie believes in a sustainable future with a balanced energy mix and a lasting role for diversified gases. Our assets are expected to play an important role in this. Given the uncertainties concerning future developments, we have made certain assumptions and used estimates in our financial statements, including assumptions about the useful life of our network infrastructure and the associated depreciation methods and periods. These lifespans and periods may be shorter or longer than we currently estimate, depending on, among other things, which assets we can repurpose for alternative use and when the transmission of natural gas will be phased out. We explain this further in note ‎5 ‘Tangible fixed assets’. These developments may also affect the required size of the provision for abandonment costs. Depending on which assets we can reuse, we may need to remove more or fewer assets than what we currently foresee. We explain this further in note ‎23 ‘Other provisions’.

In our management report, we explain our activities in the area of the energy transition in more detail.

This change means that while the consolidated net revenue and costs and the changes to the consolidated statement of financial position in the first three quarters of 2023 include the underlying financial information of EemsEnergyTerminal, they do not include this at all in 2024. For a correct basis of comparison, this change must be taken into account when reading the consolidated financial information for 2024 compared to 2023.