Households, prices and policy in the European energy transition
Reference
Horizon Europe 101226229
Period
1 March 2026 to 28 February 2030
Funding and coordination
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network, funded by the European Union and coordinated by the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)
Project overview
Households are becoming more active participants in the electricity system. They consume electricity, produce it through solar panels and can shift demand from electric vehicles, heat pumps and other appliances. These responses help balance variable renewable generation, but they also expose households to volatile prices and new forms of risk.
The effects are uneven. Households differ in income, housing, access to finance, energy technologies and their ability to change consumption. A price signal that improves system efficiency may therefore increase financial pressure on households that have limited room to respond.
ENERPOL studies how energy markets and public policy can limit household risk and inequality while preserving useful incentives for consumption and investment.
Research objectives
ENERPOL examines four connected questions:
- How do energy-price shocks affect consumption, investment, income, wealth and other household decisions?
- When are price caps or energy subsidies preferable to direct income support, and how should they be designed?
- How can retail and flexibility contracts allocate risk between households, suppliers and the electricity system?
- How do tariffs, retail regulation and other market rules affect household flexibility, system operation, competition and inequality?
Approach
ENERPOL combines household-level data, economic models, energy-system analysis and experiments. Where data access permits, researchers link administrative records on income and wealth with information on household energy consumption, production and contracts. Cross-country analysis compares energy systems with different levels of electrification and different policy settings.
Economic models connect differences in household technologies, assets, financing constraints and attitudes towards risk to electricity markets and system operation. Econometric and experimental work studies how households respond to prices, policies and contract design.
My role
I am a co-principal investigator in ENERPOL, lead UCLouvain’s contribution and supervise both UCLouvain doctoral projects. My work covers energy-market regulation, retail-market design, household flexibility and distributional effects.
UCLouvain team and doctoral projects
UCLouvain hosts two of ENERPOL’s 14 doctoral projects at the Louvain Institute of Data Analysis and Modeling in economics and statistics (LIDAM).
Co-supervision
- Jean Hindriks co-supervises the project on retail-market design and household flexibility.
- François Maniquet co-supervises the project on energy policy, durable assets and inequality.
Together, the UCLouvain team connects energy economics, industrial organisation and public economics.
Retail-market design and household flexibility
The first project studies the trade-off between demand response and consumer protection. It compares distribution tariffs, network-access conditions, the allocation of revenues from renewable-energy support contracts and retail-price regulation. The analysis accounts for differences in technologies such as solar panels, electric vehicles and heat pumps, and relates household responses to system flexibility and stability.
Energy policy, durable assets and inequality
The second project compares direct income support with interventions through energy prices. It studies how durable assets and access to finance shape the efficiency and distributional effects of these policies. A public-economics model will connect electricity supply and demand, household investment and financing constraints, and will be examined using evidence from Norway and Belgium.
Academic hosts
During their network research stays, Trine Krogh Boomsma at the University of Copenhagen will host the project on retail-market design and household flexibility, while Mohammed Mardan at NHH will host the project on energy policy, durable assets and inequality.
Incoming doctoral researchers
UCLouvain will also host two doctoral researchers based at other ENERPOL universities. One project, based at Leibniz University Hannover, studies high-frequency electricity prices and financial tools for managing risk in volatile energy markets. The other, based at Vilnius University, studies the design and experimental evaluation of contracts for household demand response. Their planned stays at UCLouvain will focus respectively on structural approaches and the theoretical modelling of flexibility tariffs.
Belgian partners and policy exchange
Planned research stays connect the two UCLouvain doctoral projects with Belgian policy and industry expertise. Work with Elia Transmission Belgium will draw on operational knowledge about household flexibility, predictability and metering data. Collaboration with the Belgian Federal Planning Bureau will connect the research to Belgian data, policy expertise and policy-evaluation tools.
UCLouvain is scheduled to co-host ENERPOL’s third-year research and policy conference in Brussels and Louvain-la-Neuve. The programme foresees a policy conference with Bruegel, where doctoral researchers can discuss their work with academic, policy and industry participants.
Network and training
ENERPOL brings together nine academic institutions and 15 non-academic organisations across Europe. Energy companies, system operators, regulators, public agencies and policy organisations contribute data, institutional knowledge, training and secondments.
The network will train 14 doctoral candidates through joint supervision, summer schools, workshops and research stays in academic and non-academic organisations.
Links
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.