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,
What if joy is the missing piece of the energy transition? What if the energy sector dared to feel more human, more alive, more connected?
There’s a moment I’ll never forget. I was 27, sitting at a round table on energy poverty. Recently appointed head of the National Energy Ombudsman
Trade is one of the oldest forms of human connection. Before we built parliaments, before we drafted treaties, we traded. With salt, spices, wool, and
Not yet, at least. And still, we seem to believe that more code, more data, more models will somehow deliver it. That by automating complexity,
There is a question that has stayed with me ever since I spoke with Fabrizio Chiara , the founder of SUNSPEKER , in the latest
If I asked you whether you trust me, you’d probably say yes. But would you trust me to perform open-heart surgery? Of course not! Trust
#EUClimatePact ambassador.
Next Energy Consumer founder and executive director. Consultant & policy-shaker.
