Second Trinational Stakeholder Workshop

Events

Citizens as Prosumers: Legal Status, Rights, Involvement in the Energy Transition

On October 7, 2020, the second cross-border workshop of the project was held online with key regional stakeholders. This event was organized by the SAGE laboratory (WP4 and WP5) and the coordination office of the University of Freiburg. 30 French, German and Swiss participants exchanged on the topic of governance and regulatory issues related to individual and collective energy self-consumption, while reflecting on the perspectives of improving the status of prosumers in the light of the EU Clean Energy Package.

Three presentations were held by experts on the national regulatory frameworks and the related challenges and opportunities. Damian Wimmer from Energieagentur Regio Freiburg, RĂ©mi Bastien, co-founder of Enogrid (Paris) and Christian Moll, responsible knowledge management at Swissolar (Zurich) each presented the regulations on individual and collective energy self-consumption in Germany, France and Switzerland. Different market characteristics such as infrastructure, tariffs, grid efficiency were questioned. Experts and participants discussed the main legal barriers and possible improvements, particularly in terms of tariffs, to make energy self-consumption more attractive and accessible to private and associative owners.

With all these elements in mind, the discussions that followed focused on the issues addressed in each presentation. The two working groups discussed the regulations on production and consumption of clean energy at both local and European levels as well as the obstacles to the implementation of cross-border projects. It was concluded that the most effective way to promote small-scale projects is to develop and support decentralized structures. At the same time, the distribution of resources and taxes needs rethinking, with a view to developing a viable market model.