Consumers, trust and market legitimacy
Energy efficiency is dead, long live energy efficiency
Europe is about to decide what efficiency means next. The question is who the new version is written for.
16 October 2026
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Europe is about to decide what efficiency means next. The question is who the new version is written for.
Who speaks for the people that markets treat as companies, and what Thursday’s Citizens’ Energy Forum will tell us
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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
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.
For years, EU energy policy focused primarily on infrastructure: generation capacity, wholesale markets and interconnections. The Citizens Energy Package Communication shifts the focus toward people,
#EUClimatePact ambassador.
Next Energy Consumer founder and executive director. Consultant & policy-shaker.
