Legal Framework for Energy Sector Business Models in a Smart City
(Room D201-D202, Elicium, Second Floor)
10 Jun 15
4:00 PM
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5:30 PM
Tracks:
Theme: Europe's Transitioning Power Sector
The term ’smart city’ encompasses a variety of topics, e.g. energy production, distribution and efficiency, e-mobility, logistics and transport, communication, data protection.
In the energy sector the idea of ’smart city’ is to integrate business and sustainability: Integration of renewable energy and/or decentralized energy supply, self-consumption, regional/community direct sales models and direct / local distribution systems.
With current energy regulation and legal approach having been developed around the traditional generator led sector model, any business model looking to address the smart agenda will have to be tested against the existing regulations such as – in Germany – the German Renewable Energies Act 2014 (EEG 2014), the German Energy Industry Act (EnWG) and the secondary legislation and rules based on these laws, as well as tax and planning and licensing law.
In the presentation I would consider a number of business models and their feasibility against and constraints arising from the regulatory framework in Germany, including:
• Combination of decentralized energy production and auto-consumption: This allows for opportunities such as reducing the dependence on third-party supply and grid usage, the possibility of optimizing the advantages of state support and the reduction of subsidies.
• Use of virtual power plants and establishment of direct marketing concepts: Direct marketing provides opportunities for existing plant operators (or new entrants) to obtain a higher remuneration compared to the fixed feed-in tariff under German law. In addition, the produced and virtually aggregated power of multiple power plants can be used to participate in the energy balancing markets.