Energy Consumer Market Alignment Project
The era of energy digitalization requires policymakers and regulators to embrace a new way of thinking about energy governance focused on removing barriers to facilitate new markets, enable new forms of transactions, and empower consumers. If government is to remain relevant, policymakers and regulators must align energy policy to enable competitive markets designed to accelerate innovation, achieve greater sustainability, and optimize benefits to consumers.
Government should support broad open data sets that enable more competition in the energy system and more transparency of energy services and products. Tensions between emerging data and innovations and existing energy and environmental laws are putting pressure on traditional boundaries of state, federal, and even global governance. Policymakers can resolve these tensions by aligning the role of government with the following principles:
1. Emphasis on energy market design elements to enable innovation, along with transparent compensatory structures for energy services provided to the electricity grid and transportation infrastructure network;
2. Emphasis on determining access to data collected and commoditized in digital markets and how it is shared and utilized for regulatory compliance purposes;
3. Heightened emphasis on updating policies and protocols affecting critical infrastructure designations, resilience efforts, and surveying new cyber, physical, and severe weather-related threats.
The Energy Consumer Market Alignment Project (EC-MAP) advanced a dialogue around the role of government in this new era of energy digitalization, to build consensus for policy roadmaps that benefit energy consumers, the economy, and the environment. It developed a vision for an energy future where digital technologies drive greater transparency, fair competition, and consumer choice — and where policy enables innovation instead of creating market barriers.
EC-MAP developed the following three sector-specific white papers with recommendations on how to align public policy with a digital energy future — a future where government empowers consumers, supports free and fair markets, and enables innovation:
