Are Energy Regulators criminally negligent for climate change?

This week, someone finally had the backbone to publicly state the alarming fact about climate change: we are hurtling to global warming of about 3 degrees. And how have we got there? A complete regulatory failure to evolve the energy system fast enough to incentivise innovation. Innovation that is necessary to create the step change we need.

Energy regulators are hell bent on making good the historical investments in the energy system and maintaining the status quo.

This is all at the expense of consumers, who can’t threaten to turn the lights off and end the political careers of those who have made decisions on their behalf. They can’t lobby, like the incumbent fossil fuel businesses do in an attempt to gain the huge amounts of money they need to shore up their dying industry. Most energy consumers aren’t even aware of this long-term withholding of control, or the removal of power from the consumer over something they rely so heavily on.

But, is there a change on the horizon? Have we just bought the line that we are powerless, that there is nothing we can do to challenge the status quo?

Unlike this powerless consumer we imagine, under the thumb of an old industry, we can use demand flexibility — and flexible electricity consumers are in fact incredibly powerful. Flexible consumers can move their consumption away from times when dirty generators are making expensive electricity to cheaper times when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. Flexible consumers make the future.

As a child growing up in Sweden, I remember 20 degree summers — ones that were considered balmy, perfect for lake swimming and being outdoors. This summer, Sweden experienced its first forest fires. Sweden was lucky in that no-one died, but countries like Greece and Portugal were not so lucky. A recent National Geographic article drew the connection in a frighteningly clear argument: “These fires across the continent have something in common: they were more likely to happen, and to burn more destructively, because of human-caused climate change.”

Do energy regulators have blood on their hands? Can they maintain their legitimacy in the face of what climate change is doing to our planet in numerable different ways?

Sara Bell
CEO & Founder Tempus Energy Co-Founder FLEX Network
https://www.tempusenergy.com/
https://flextoken.io/