You have more energy rights than you think, and the EU's Unlock Your Power campaign wants you to start using them.

Most of us never think about our energy rights until a bill stops adding up or a supplier gets something wrong. That is the day those rights are tested in real life, and the day you find out whether they mean anything at all.

Recorded live on launch day at EU Sustainable Energy Week, Marine speaks with Katarzyna Wolos of European Commission's DG Energy about Unlock Your Power, the European Commission's first awareness campaign on consumer energy rights. Built around ordinary life stages rather than legislation, it rests on one idea: the power to understand, choose and act is already yours.

In this conversation:

• Why awareness is the weak link when only a third of Europeans say they fully understand their bill

• How the Citizens Energy Package becomes real: protection from disconnection, transparent billing, the right to join an energy community

• One message across three realities: cooling in Greece, heating in Czechia, shared solar in Spain

• Redress as the invisible right, and why knowing a door exists changes how people act

• Trust as a confident relationship with the unknown, and what that asks of institutions

A companion to Ep "The Public Square" with Ewelina Hartstein, the episode sits where consumer rights, vulnerability and the credibility of EU energy policy meet.

Campaign: Unlock Your Power: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/energy-consumers-and-prosumers/unlock-your-power_en

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

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Two years ago at EUSEW 2024, I called my vox pop episode "the dog who caught the bus." After years of running hard to define the European Green Deal, the EU had finally caught what it was chasing, and seemed unsure what to do next. I ended that episode saying it was time for extra communication efforts, starting with uncomfortable conversations.

Two years on, this episode asks the same question from inside the institution. Ewelina Hartstein leads external communication at DG Energy and is one of the people responsible for staging EUSEW. We talk about the work behind the work: how DG Energy chooses what gets said, who gets to speak, and what remains off-stage at a moment when energy policy is entangled with affordability, security, and trust.

What the conversation surfaces:

• Why "it comes from Brussels" is, in her own words, an expression she does not like

• What it means that EUSEW "brings together a community of people who are convinced," and how DG Energy thinks about engaging the unconverted

• The 20th anniversary edition's three-word theme (clean, secure, competitive) and the affordability dimension she insists belongs alongside them

• A live disagreement on whether the conversations EUSEW hosts are "uncomfortable" or "perfectly legitimate"

• The shift she names directly: energy moving from commodity to right, and a new EU awareness campaign on people's rights in energy launching at EUSEW

A behind-the-scenes conversation released around EUSEW 2026 (9 to 11 June, Brussels and online).

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.

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The EU's energy transition contains clear legal obligations to prioritise vulnerable households. The EPBD requires financial incentives to target energy-poor households first. The Energy Efficiency Directive requires member states to make the best possible use of public funding for low-income consumers. And yet without binding targeting requirements, public money flows to middle-income and affluent groups by institutional default — not by accident, but by design.

Anna Zsófia Bajomi, Energy Poverty Policy Officer at FEANTSA, traces the mechanism: post-financing schemes that assume households can pre-invest thousands of euros; eligibility criteria built around formal employment and debt-free status; CO₂ savings indicators easier to reach among better-off households. The outcome is predictable — and avoidable.

In this episode:

• Why firewood users in Central and Eastern Europe remain invisible in EU statistics and crisis response, and how EU policy has perversely incentivised continued burning while punishing countries for the air pollution it causes

• How renovation schemes including France's MaPrimeRenov structurally exclude the poorest through co-contribution requirements

• The gap between EPBD and EED targeting obligations and what the MFF 2028–2034 actually delivers

• Why untargeted public subsidies crowd out private finance rather than leverage it

• New York State's 35% community benefit mandate as a governance reference for Europe

References: FEANTSA · European Energy Poverty Handbook · Jacques Delors Institute · EPBD Art. 17(18) · EED Art. 24(3) · MaPrimeRenov · New York State Climate Act

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.

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Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Energy poverty didn't exist as a concept in Spain when Marta García París first encountered it. Today, Ecoserveis runs one of the most cited local intervention models in Europe — built not on technical expertise alone, but on the conviction that citizens are the experts, and institutions exist to translate that expertise into action.

This episode, originally released in 2021, marks the beginning of Energ'Ethic. We're replaying it at episode 100 because the questions it raises have only sharpened: who gets to access the energy transition, on what terms, and through whose knowledge?

What this episode covers:

• How Ecoserveis came to define energy poverty in a Mediterranean context where the concept had no name — and what that process reveals about the limits of Northern European policy frameworks when applied elsewhere

• The Barcelona energy advice points: a public service model that pairs technical energy guidance with peer support from people who have themselves experienced vulnerability

• Why information access — not technology — remains the central barrier to an inclusive energy transition, and how targeted advice can unblock situations that financial support alone cannot

• The compounding effect of COVID-19 on energy vulnerability, particularly for households that shifted from workplace to home without the financial or physical infrastructure to absorb that change

• How European project networks enabled Ecoserveis to import, test, and ultimately export intervention models — including a peer-to-peer training approach now being scaled through the SWEET project

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.

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Adrian Hiel set himself a goal in 2015: to fully electrify his own life. Ten years, a cargo bike, a fully insulated house he couldn't afford to put a heat pump in, and a 50,000-euro loan later — he's nearly there. He is also the first Director the Electrification Alliance has ever appointed, leading a coalition of ten European industry and advocacy organisations pushing for 35% electrification of final energy use by 2030.

The contradiction is instructive. Because it maps the exact terrain he's navigating professionally.

In this episode, we take stock of where the electrification agenda stands as a governance challenge. The technical and economic case is settled. What remains is the institutional question: does European policy have the architecture to act on it?

We cover the EU tax structure that still prices electricity like a pollutant — four times more than gas in Belgium — because it was written when coal fired the grid. The Electrification Action Plan, now expected in June 2026, and what it must actually deliver beyond restatement of agreed targets. The Electrification Staircase framework, co-authored with Michael Liebreich and others, and what it implies about sequencing and governance. Rural households as the overlooked opportunity. And why, in Adrian's words, this has become a social transition as much as a technical one — requiring reassurance as much as regulation.

Adrian also addresses the geopolitical reframe directly: the shift from climate argument to sovereignty argument, and why the US's transformation from energy importer to energy exporter has permanently changed the strategic calculus for Europe.

The Electrification Alliance: electrification-alliance.eu Electrification Staircase: watts-next.eu

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.

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Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Half of European households live in flats or rented homes. For a decade, the clean energy transition has passed them by — smart tariffs assume an EV, rooftop solar assumes a roof, home batteries assume a wall you can drill into. Ashley Grealish has spent his career on exactly this structural gap: first at Bboxx, building pay-as-you-go solar for half a million homes in rural East Africa; then at ev.energy, scaling smart EV charging while pushing it beyond premium vehicles; now at Windfall Energy, with a 2.5 kWh plug-in battery that arrives overnight, plugs into a standard socket, and does the rest itself.

What this episode covers

System design over product design. At Bboxx, the team realised that importing a standard television into an off-grid kit didn't work — the power draw was too high. The solution was to rethink everything: low-power 12V appliances, right-sized panels, circular lead-acid battery recovery. The same logic is inside the Windfall battery: don't adapt the user to the system. Redesign the system around the user.

Affordability as architecture. Bboxx started at $400 upfront and couldn't reach most of the people it was built for. The shift to pay-as-you-go unlocked scale. Windfall is at the same first stage — £1,000 on pre-order, with a clear ambition toward zero upfront cost through energy supplier partnerships and, potentially, the UK Warm Homes Discount.

Desirability is not optional. Ashley filled his flat with test batteries from the European market. One arrived at 45 kg on a crate. Others had loud fans and permanent blue indicator lights. None were designed to be lived with. His conclusion: a product no one wants in their home will not reach the people who need it most.

Organisations mentioned: Bboxx · e.quinox (Imperial College) · GemFair · ev.energy · Windfall Energy · Warm Homes Discount (UK)

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.

Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox

Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedIn
Music: I Need You Here - Kamarius
Edition: Podcast Media Factory

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© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

The EU's flexibility agenda promises to empower consumers. Demand-side response, dynamic tariffs, smart meters — the idea is that households can take control of their energy use and benefit from the transition. The evidence is less tidy.

Vulnerable households are often willing to engage. What stops them is not reluctance — it is the architecture of their daily lives: caring responsibilities, health conditions, insecure housing, inflexible routines. When policy reads low participation as apathy, it designs for the wrong problem.

Aurore Dudka is a researcher. She returns to Energ'Ethic with a systematic review of 66 empirical studies on demand-side response and energy-vulnerable households (Energy Research & Social Science, March 2026), and a co-authored analysis of gender and the energy transition (inGenere, January 2026).

What this episode covers:

Willingness vs. capacity. Vulnerable households want to participate in flexibility programmes. What constrains them is structural — rigid routines, limited technology access, low digital literacy, insecure tenure. Treating low uptake as disinterest produces schemes that exclude the households they were built for.

Up to 20% higher bills — for those who can least absorb it. For sick and low-income households with inflexible consumption needs, poorly designed dynamic tariffs can increase energy bills by up to 20%. This is what happens when pricing mechanisms meet households whose energy use is not discretionary. No-harm guarantees exist as a design tool. They are not yet standard.

The man decides. The woman adapts. Flexibility policy addresses households as single actors. Within households, someone takes the technology decision and someone else reorganises their daily life around it. The invisible labour of energy management falls disproportionately on women — and empowerment frameworks that ignore this redistribute burden, not agency.

Stop designing for rationalistic consumers. Aurore's call to policymakers: stop thinking about citizens as rationalistic [sic] consumers who respond to price signals, and start thinking in terms of practice, time, and labour. The Citizens' Energy Package — which names farmers, carers, rural inhabitants and kindergartens as the citizens the transition must serve — opens this door. The design work to walk through it is still ahead.

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Music: I Need You Here - Kamarius
Edition: Podcast Media Factory

Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon

© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Women are already the primary decision-makers in household renovation and low-carbon upgrades. They manage timelines, handle budgets, research materials, anticipate health impacts, and carry the cognitive load of the entire process. The retrofit system, however, is not designed around them.

In this episode, Marine Cornelis speaks with Ellora Coupe, founder of Her Own Space, about the structural gap between where retrofit happens and how it is designed. The conversation examines why trust, not technology, is the real barrier to household action, why peer-based learning models fill a gap that institutional tools cannot, and what it would take for funding and policy frameworks to account for the full complexity of human-centred change.

This is a conversation about why retrofit moves slowly when it ignores who is already leading the work.

1. Trust as missing infrastructure. Retrofit faces a systemic trust deficit — not a communications problem, but a structural one. Households distrust contractors, product recommendations, and institutional schemes. Ellora argues that this trust erosion is the most underestimated obstacle to transition at scale.

2. The patronising design gap Women approaching retrofit are routinely not taken seriously as technical interlocutors. This is not incidental. It generates an invisible friction cost — eroded confidence, delayed decisions, abandoned projects — that no current scheme measures.

3. Community as a governance model Her Own Space is not a peer support forum, but a response to a specific governance failure: the loss of learning between individual retrofit journeys, and the incapacity of one-size-fits-all programmes to accommodate property diversity, budget variation, and different life stages. The community model absorbs complexity that institutional tools can't hold.

4. Sequencing without a single entry point Rather than prescribing a starting point, Her Own Space deliberately removes sequencing pressure. Members enter at any stage and learn across the full continuum of a retrofit journey. This challenges the design logic of most public-facing programmes, which rely on a single message reaching everyone at the same moment.

5. The early adopter argument — and what it means for policy Research cited in this episode suggests women adopt technology faster than men when it performs reliably, and abandon it faster when it does not. Designing for resilience is not the same as designing for uptake.

6. The agility gap in retrofit funding Innovation funding models are built around static, deliverable-defined outcomes. They can't accommodate iterative, community-embedded forms of innovation. Ellora argues this is a structural bias, and Her Own Space's membership model exists partly to avoid it.

Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Music: I Need You Here - Kamarius
Edition: Podcast Media Factory

Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon

© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.