Climate emergency, a new energy model and the collaborative economy: towards citizen energy communities?
Becoming the first continent to be climatically neutral is currently both Europe’s main challenge and greatest opportunity. A new energy model, based on energy that is renewable, distributed and efficient, is crucial in order to accelerate the solution to the climate emergency. In this sense, on 25 February 2015, the European Commission set out a vision of an Energy Union with citizens at its core, where citizens take ownership of the energy transition, benefit from new technologies to reduce their bills and participate actively in the market. In June 2019, the European Union turned this public policy objective into an applicable regulation while the new EU directive on the electricity market set a new actor on the energy market: the citizen energy community. In this article, we analyse the meaning and significance of this key player in transforming the economy into a climate-neutral economy.
ODS
Gemma Domènech CostafredaConsultant in public policy and the regulation of ICTs in the Centre for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CTTI), at the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia. A jurist, I have a degree in Law from UB (University of Barcelona) and a Master in Advanced Studies in European Union Law from Toulouse University of Social Sciences. My classes on the subject of Competition Law in the IP+IT Master’s at ESADE are on the regulation of electronic communications. In the most recent courses, the main areas that we have studied have been net neutrality, OTT services and the platforms of what we call the sharing economy.
When the platforms Airbnb and Uber emerged in Catalonia, both the Secretary of Business and Competitiveness and the Secretary of Mobility in the Generalitat of Catalonia at the time considered it necessary to “understand before regulating”. Thanks to this approach, we could see how the challenges and impacts of the sharing economy took in much more than just taxis and tourist flats.
My obsession (passion): how to make what we are told is possible happen. The project which I am now working on to bring to completion is to make the solution that I have shared with you in this article a reality, and to propose, from the position of public administration, a collaborative platform which will allow us to codesign the digital ecosystem of collective action for the climate in order to thereby accelerate the transition to a climate-neutral economy.
