EUSEW turns 20. To mark it, Marine Cornelis sits down at the European Sustainable Energy Week with three people who have spent two decades inside EU energy policy: Thomas Nowak (heat pumps and buildings), Dušan Jakovljević (industrial energy efficienc…
You have more energy rights than you think, and the EU’s Unlock Your Power campaign wants you to start using them.
Most of us never think about our energy rights until a bill stops adding up or a supplier gets something wrong. That is the day those…
Two years ago at EUSEW 2024, I called my vox pop episode “the dog who caught the bus.” After years of running hard to define the European Green Deal, the EU had finally caught what it was chasing, and seemed unsure what to do next. I ended that episod…
Is Europe regulating for yesterday’s energy consumer? Two Brussels rooms last week, a 30°C weekend ahead, and a policy architecture absorbed by today’s crisis while
The EU’s energy transition contains clear legal obligations to prioritise vulnerable households. The EPBD requires financial incentives to target energy-poor households first. The Energy Efficiency Directive requires member states to make the best pos…
Energy poverty didn’t exist as a concept in Spain when Marta García París first encountered it. Today, Ecoserveis runs one of the most cited local intervention models in Europe — built not on technical expertise alone, but on the conviction that citiz…
Adrian Hiel set himself a goal in 2015: to fully electrify his own life. Ten years, a cargo bike, a fully insulated house he couldn’t afford to put a heat pump in, and a 50,000-euro loan later — he’s nearly there. He is also the first Director the Ele…
My electricity bill arrived this week.
Line item: network losses. €1.54.
I have solar panels on my balcony. I generate electricity. I reduce what I draw from the grid.
I still pay, in full, the standardised penalty for everyone else’s losses.
His name is the ghost consumer.
He doesn’t generate. He doesn’t store. He doesn’t adjust. He just pays. And when the price spikes, he gets a voucher.
The problem is he doesn’t exist anymore — if he ever did.
And the gap between who the system imagines and who is actually standing in front of it is no longer just a design flaw. In the middle of another fossil fuel crisis, it has a price.
New newsletter out. On ghost consumers, compounding choices, and what €1.54 says about who the energy transition is built for.
Half of European households live in flats or rented homes. For a decade, the clean energy transition has passed them by — smart tariffs assume an EV, rooftop solar assumes a roof, home batteries assume a wall you can drill into. Ashley Grealish has sp…
The EU’s flexibility agenda promises to empower consumers. Demand-side response, dynamic tariffs, smart meters — the idea is that households can take control of their energy use and benefit from the transition. The evidence is less tidy.
Vulnerable…
#EUClimatePact ambassador.
Next Energy Consumer founder and executive director. Consultant & policy-shaker.
