Citizens' Energy Package: citizens' engagement, energy communities and prosumerism

Key points:

The EESC:

• stresses that the Commission has so far failed to put citizens at the heart of the Energy Union. It thus welcomes the Citizens’ Energy Package (CEP) as a way to engage people and communities, but underlines that the CEP must guarantee citizens’ full involvement in building a fair, sustainable, and secure energy system. It also calls for stronger action against energy poverty, with a clear definition and local, data-driven identification of affected households;
• highlights that the CEP should prioritize financing energy communities and give clear guidance on key concepts regarding community energy, which are now understood very differently across Member States. Funding should be subject to minimal standards being met in the areas of youth engagement, fostering energy literacy and developing green skills;
• in order to empower citizens and establish of the prerequisites for mitigating energy poverty, recommends that the EU: 1) immediately impose an EU-wide ban on disconnection of households; 2) move away from the merit order system, which links electricity prices to gas prices; 3) adjust the policy language by referring to ‘citizens’, instead of ‘consumers’, in relation to energy; 4) set up a European energy ombudsperson.