Platforms in Power: Householder Perspectives on the Social, Environmental and Economic Challenges of Energy Platforms

Abstract

New business models and digital infrastructures, in the form of ‘energy platforms’, are emerging as part of a transition towards decarbonised, decentralised, and digitised energy systems. These energy platforms offer new ways for householders to trade or exchange energy with other households or with energy system actors, but also bring along challenges. This paper examines how householders engage with potential environmental, social, and economic opportunities and risks of energy platforms. We convened two serious-game style workshops in which Dutch frontrunner householders assumed the role of platform members and were challenged to deliberate about different scenarios and issues. The workshop results, while explorative in nature, are indicative of a willingness to pursue energy system integration rather than autarky or grid defection. The idea of energy platforms as vehicles for energy justice appealed less to the householders, although the participants were moderately interested in sharing surplus renewable energy. Finally, environmental motivations were of key importance in householders’ evaluation of different platform types. This shows that in the role of energy platform members, householders can engage with both the community and the grid in new and different ways, leading to a diversity of possible outcomes for householder engagement.

An Ecosystem View of Peer-to-Peer Electricity Trading: Scenario Building by Business Model Matrix to Identify New Roles

“…End customer value − Autarky, self-sufficiency, or independence of energy supply [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] − Autonomy [11,15,[18][19][20][21][22][23] − Green energy [13,15,24] − Lower electricity costs [22][23][24][25][26] − Positive attitude to regionality [13,19,20,22,23] − Sense of community identity [27] − Intangible returns (built upon the notion of togetherness, friendship, love, solidarity, and different ways of bonding with others) [28,29] − Responsibility to future generation [15] − Sustainable lifestyle [21] − Desire for greater agency (active participation) in the energy transition [13,21,30,31] − Social comparison [13,15,30] − Perceived importance of shared generation and consumption and easy implementation [20] Business value − Make electricity less expensive, including making renewable energy more profitable and "supporting new and better mechanisms for return-on-investment beyond government subsidies" [13,[21]…”

“…Sense of community identity refers to intangible returns built upon the notion of togetherness, friendship, love, solidarity, and different ways of bonding with others [29]. Responsibility to future generations refers to environmental benefits that are often cast in ethical terms [15]. Sustainable lifestyle refers to environmental benefits in cultural terms [21].…”

Pricing decisions in peer-to-peer and prosumer-centred electricity markets: Experimental analysis in Germany and the United Kingdom

“…While some participants saw potential in the ability to provide power prices to participants in fuel poverty, others were concerned by the dependency this would introduce on the altruism of others rather than more traditional centrally coordinated alleviation mechanisms. This discomfort with the idea of delegating too much socio-economic work to P2P communities is also present in a workshop study by Smale and Kloppenburg [23]. There was little appetite for using the communities as a redistributive mechanism, with a preference for using them to deliver some shared community objectives, such as facilities.…”

Two Years After: A Scoping Review of GDPR Effects on Serious Games Research Ethics Reporting

“…Examining the context of data protection phrases revealed that authors emphasised most the anonymisation of study artefacts such as transcripts [30], spreadsheets [38], blog-posts [35] or usage/interaction and activity profiles [24]. In both sub-collections, studies only sporadically reported on anonymisation of participants while also sometimes referring to "anonymising" when actually "pseudonymising" was performed [39]. Only two studies reported concrete pseudonymising after the GDPR introduction [13,20].…”