IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2018 - 76

in my view

Gerd Schönwälder

power to the people?
what it means to the changing energy landscape

I

IS IT TrUE THAT THE SHIFT TO
cleaner, more sustainable forms of
energy is "empowering" energy consumers, putting them at the center of
the new, greener energy system of the
future? Is power really seeping away
from the giant energy behemoths of the
past to the nimble, green-energy prosumers and cooperatives of the future?
In the face of today's energy landscape, still dominated by relatively few
large, centrally structured energy utilities and system operators, these claims
may seem overblown. But the energy
landscape is changing, and this has
major implications for energy research:
the transition to a decentralized, lowcarbon energy system powered mainly
by renewables-which has only just
begun-really does open new horizons
for energy consumers and energy citizens alike (an important distinction to
which I will return). As they come to
grips with these changes, energy researchers must not lose sight of the
profoundly disempowering effects of energy poverty and a lack of alternatives
for carbon-intensive regions, which can
prolong the inevitable exit from the dirty
fossil fuels of the past.
Just what does empowering consumers mean? For the European Commission, it means essentially three things:
1) giving consumers more information
about their energy bills and greater
freedom in choosing their energy serDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2017.2762380
Date of publication: 5 January 2018

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ieee power & energy magazine

vice providers, 2) enabling consumers
to manage their energy consumption
via novel digital technologies (such as
smart meters and demand-response systems) and to become less dependent on
the grid by producing
and selling energy themselves, and 3) ensuring
the protection of consumer privacy and sensitive data while providing
safeguards against catastrophic system failure,
a growing concern as
the digitization of the energy sector is
blurring the borderlines to other sectors
such as home comfort, entertainment,
and even health.
"Providing a fair deal to consumers" is a key theme running through
the Energy Union "winter package"
(see http://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/news/
commission-proposes-new-rules-consumer-centred-clean-energy-transition) that the European Commission
tabled in November 2016. It spells out
how innovation and changes to regulation and market design will give consumers a greater say and more control
over their energy choices (along with
supplementary measures to protect
vulnerable consumers and tackle energy poverty). For example, consumers
will be able to access certified online
price-comparison tools to find the best
suppliers, adjust their energy consumption using smart meters that support
variable pricing, and store or sell electricity they have produced themselves

using a variety of small-scale generation techniques.
This is an important agenda that
will strengthen the position of individual consumers, households, or (small
and large) businesses
in their dealings with
energy service providers. But not only that:
it has the potential to
fundamentally alter
the relations between
energy consumers on
the one hand and the
institutional and governance structures
surrounding them on the other. Put differently, aside from turning formerly
passive energy consumers into more
active and informed ones, empowering
consumers can also help to make them
act as energy citizens.
Why is this distinction important?
Because whether you look at people
as consumers or as citizens matters:
conceptually, when trying to understand energy-related choices and behavior, practically, when designing
policies to address people's concerns,
and of course politically, when people get involved and become active
participants in energy-related policy
making themselves.
Take, for instance, the case of energy cooperatives. One could argue that
these are nothing but groups of individual consumers banding together to
get a better deal, say, when purchasing

Just what does
empowering
consumers
mean?

(continued on p. 71)
january/february 2018
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/news
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2018
