Feja Lesniewska

Prosumers: New Actors in EU Energy Security

This chapter critically analyses the new challenges and opportunities that prosumers, as new energy actors, bring to achieving energy security goals in the context of the European Union (EU). Following trends in the EU towards new levels of cooperation in energy governance, decentralisation, and the emergence of a ‘gig’ economy, the energy sector is currently undergoing a large-scale transition. One of its core aspects is the progressive top-down diffusion of potential, competences, and leverage across the energy value chain from states and corporate actors towards prosumers. While this trend creates ample potential for facilitating and improving the EU’s security of supply, as well as fulfilling its climate change targets, several caveats exist. These caveats are not confined within energy security prerogatives; they also extend to the critical management of digital security, which the digitalisation of energy services brings to the fore. Private and public finance should be effectively attracted and directed to infrastructure schemes that will enable a transition from the traditional centralised power network to the decentralised nexus of smart grids. Technology will play a crucial role in facilitating the role of prosumers in the new market in the making.

Prosumers as New Energy Actors

This chapter analyses the opportunities that prosumers, as new energy actors, bring to achieving energy security goals in the context of the European Union (EU). In energy governance, there is a progressive top–down diffusion of potential, competences, and leverage across the energy value chain from States and corporate actors towards prosumers. Private and public finance should be attracted and directed to infrastructure schemes that will enable a transition from the traditional centralised power network to the decentralised nexus of smart grids. Technology will play a crucial role in facilitating the role of prosumers in the new market in-the-making.

UNFCCC REDD+ COP Decisions: The Cumulative Effect on Forest Related Law Processes

Abstract International law development theories fail to determine the legal nature and effect of decisions made by treaty bodies. An example that demonstrates this is the ongoing evolution of a mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). REDD+ was incorporated into the UNFCCC negotiating agenda on further implementation by the Bali Action Plan in 2007. Although using classical interpretation of the making of international law there is no REDD+ legal agreement, REDD+ has permeated many areas of law in a number of ways, from the international to the local level. This article examines the cumulative effect that REDD+ is having on related forest law and policy making, as well as indigenous peoples and human rights. It concludes with consideration of the potential linking role that REDD+ safeguards could have, and the problems with this approach.