PV prosumers on the rise – how Europe can empower more people to produce, consume & sell their own electricity

Join our interactive policy workshop on PV prosumption “PV prosumers on the rise – how Europe can empower more people to produce, consume & sell their own electricity”, taking place on Thursday, 21 November 2019, at the BIP (Place Royale n°11) in Brussels - please find the agenda below.

The conference aims at taking stock with different experiments and to provide input for decision-makers in the Commission, the European Parliament and national governments. As a result, participants should leave the conference with food for thought for ongoing and planned policy developments with regard to the European 2050 long-term strategy for decarbonisation, the revised State Aid Guidelines as well as the development of national energy and climate plans for the next decade, which should include such price mechanisms, be it on a national or on a transnational level.

In parallel, momentum in society – with millions of people demonstrating world-wide for governments to finally take action and address climate change for real – is strongly in favour of integrating more renewables by making citizens engage in generating, storing and consuming their own PV electricity.

The workshop will showcase and evaluate results from 3 EU projects to identify what is preventing more Europeans to become PV prosumers – and develop solutions for better policy-making that will remove key barriers and boost the further uptake of photovoltaics across Europe.

We look forward to debating among a high-level audience of selected EU decision-makers and stakeholders from across the energy community where and why Prosumers are not fully benefitting from installing solar panels – which will lead us to understand how to improve the regulatory framework at EU level, but also deliver valuable input to Member States who are about to transpose the Clean Energy Package into national legislation and submit National Energy and Climate Plans by the end of 2019.

We hope that you can enrich our workshop with your expertise and join this debate which we believe as crucial for achieving higher consumer engagement and bring the energy transition to people’s homes – don’t miss out on this opportunity to shape our energy future and show the way forward to a greener Europe!

Workshop Agenda

09h15 Welcome and Introduction, Dirk Hendricks, EREF

09h30 Active Participation of Citizens in the EU Energy Transition – H2020 Results. Manuela Gigli, Innovations and Networks Executive Agency (INEA)

09h45 The new Prosumers Provisions - Challenges of Transposition. Speaker tbc, DG ENER, European Commission

10h00 PV Prosumers across Europe: what they can do – and what they can’t. Overview of regulatory framework for selected EU Member States. Luz Aquilar, German Solar Association (Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft)

10h15 Connecting and Integrating PV Prosumption to the Distribution Networks. Jörg Mühlenhoff, Climate Action Network Europe

10h30 PVP4Grid Project: Cost and CO2 Reduction Potential of Renewable Energy Communities - Comparison of Selected European Countries. Johannes Radl, Technische Universität Wien

10h45 EU Heroes Project: “Unlocking energy communities – new models for community solar in a post-subsidy world”. Graham Ayling, EST, UK

11h00 iDistributedPV Project: Integration and Development of Solar PV Solutions in the Distribution Grid. Enrique Doheijo, Deloitte Director, Economic Consulting-Energy

11h15 PV Prosumers on the rise despite barriers - how the EU can empower more people to produce, consume & sell their own electricity. Key Barriers identified by the EU Projects PVP4Grid, EU Heroes & iDistributedPV. Moira Jimeno, eclareon & Johannes Vollmer, EREF

11h20 Coffee break

11h30 3-4 Interactive Break-Out Sessions – What Policy-Makers can do next (and better!). Policy Solutions for removing Barriers and boost European PV Prosumers

12h45 Lunch

14h00 Presentation and Debate on the Results of Break-Out Sessions (~10 min each). Dirk Hendricks, EREF & Break-Out Session Moderators

14h50 Closing Remarks. Johannes Vollmer, EREF