European energy policy needs to recognise the role of consumers as partners on the energy market, Monika Štajnarovà, Senior Economic Officer at BEUC^[1], the European Consumer Organisation, said at a session on consumer participation in energy transition at the SET-Plan Conference in Luxembourg on September 22.

Štajnarovà said that the role of energy consumers is changing, because more and more consumers are interested in producing their own electricity, and that policy should reflect this changing role. Policy makers and market stakeholders need to understand consumer diversity and behaviour, nudging consumers to engage by incentivising them and providing personalised services, she said.

Franziska Mohaupt, coordinator of the InnoSmart project, a European initiative to develop emerging and sustainable industries, said that the challenges of energy transition were threefold: technical, entrepreneurial and social. From the social perspective, she said that smart grids represent a new network of actors in a liberal energy market, in which the role of households is still undefined.

This was echoed by Matthieu Mounier, Vice President for Prosumer Business at Schneider Electric, who said that energy market transition had resulted in new roles and responsibilities for end users. He said that consumers are now expected to consume less and to consume better and that, for this to happen, end users would need to be empowered as prosumers. Mounier said that it is necessary to engage with end users to ensure that they embrace new technologies. To facilitate this consumer engagement, these technologies should be readily available, cheap and easy to understand, he said.

A common thread that ran through the presentations on consumer engagement was the need for a truly competitive and transparent market. Štajnarovà warned that energy markets are not living up to consumer expectations – the market is becoming increasingly complex and there is a lack of clear and comparable information, she said.

The BEUC officer stressed that it is necessary to improve consumer trust, and that this would require the market to be transparent and smart technologies and new services to provide real benefits to consumers. Furthermore, consumer participation will need to be voluntary and consumer flexibility should be rewarded. To facilitate their increased involvement in energy market processes, users should be integrated at the early stage of the innovation process, Mohaupt said.