3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
Single Energy Market 27
The European Commission is strongly focusing on the harmonization of energy markets in the
EU, leading to a single internal market for energy. The free movement of goods, services,
capital, and labor is a founding principle of the EU. To accomplish this principle for electricity, a
single electricity market is imperative. A single electricity market is also fundamental for Europe
to meet its low carbon targets and achieve economic optimization at a European scale.
With a single internal market, energy can be produced where it is cheapest and delivered to
where it is needed. A more nationalistic approach, where countries individually manage their
security of supply, is an economically inferior alternative that is not in line with European
solidarity principles.
Energy Sector Transformation
The energy sector is transforming on a global scale, as well as within Europe. It is changing from
a centralized, one-way, hub-and-spoke grid—based on large centralized generation assets like
fossil fuels, hydro, or nuclear power plants—towards a more distributed grid, with an increased
role for renewables and distributed energy resources (DER), as well as more sophisticated
operating characteristics and controls. In the future, the power grid will be far more dynamic,
responsive, and democratized than current infrastructure allows.
Figure 1: The Energy Cloud Landscape 28
In this emerging Energy Cloud landscape – a concept that borrows from cloud computing –
tremendous change is occurring within a range of technical, commercial, environmental, social,
27 See https://ec.europa.eu/priorities/energy-union-and-climate/fully-integrated-internal-energy-market_en and
links therein.
28 See https://www.navigantresearch.com/research/the-energy-cloud
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