Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

Markets do not correct themselves simply because a problem becomes visible. Correction usually needs an actor with a legal mandate, the evidence to support a claim, and enough independence to make companies and regulators respond. In Great Britain, that actor has held authority in energy and postal services for years, and now argues for extending the model into housing, telecoms, water, and financial services.

Tom Lowe leads the energy networks and systems team at Citizens Advice, the statutory consumer advocate for domestic, small business, and heat network consumers in Great Britain. Sixteen years across energy suppliers, trade associations, regulators, and consumer advocacy inform his argument that a legal mandate, rather than goodwill, is what makes a market answerable to the people it serves.
In this conversation:
Why a statutory mandate changes how companies and regulators respond to a consumer body, compared with a voluntary or campaigning one
The fifteen year path from identifying a problem with energy brokers to direct regulation by Ofgem
The case made in Building Better Markets for extending the model into housing, telecoms, water, and financial services
How the advocate function is funded through an industry levy, and what protects that funding from becoming a dependency on the sector it holds accountable
What an EU member state would need in place to replicate the model beyond the United Kingdom
The conversation returns to a question that outlives any single sector: what a market owes the people who cannot easily walk away from it, and who holds the mandate to make sure it delivers.

Energ'Ethic, with Marine Cornelis of Next Energy Consumer: the energy transition examined through the people it touches and the systems that govern it. 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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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.

Some of the most consequential facts about an energy system never appear on a policy dashboard: whether an 85-year-old can read her own bill, whether she knows help exists, whether she trusts the voice on the phone enough to answer it.

Nina Campbell, Global Energy Lead at Consumers International, led the Blueprint for Inclusive Energy Services, the report examining a liberalised, choice-based energy market from the perspective of Italians aged 75 and over. Marine co-authored the Blueprint and brings that collaboration into this conversation on trust, exclusion, and who a market is actually built for.

In this episode:
– Why Consumers International moved away from "vulnerable consumer" toward "energy hardship," and what that shift changes about people's willingness to ask for help
– The loyalty premium: why discovering you paid more for staying put damages trust more deeply than a plainly bad deal
– The invisible labour of carers, 16% of Italians in a caregiving role around energy, mostly women over 45, absorbing costs the system doesn't recognise
– How the Blueprint's ten solutions took shape through direct collaboration with suppliers
– What it would take to replicate this method for other consumer groups and other markets

Reference: Blueprint for Inclusive Energy Services, Consumers International. (2026)

Energ'Ethic, with Marine Cornelis of Next Energy Consumer: the energy transition examined through the people it touches and the systems that govern it. 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 

Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon

© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

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

EUSEW turns 20. To mark it, Marine Cornelis sits down at the European Sustainable Energy Week with three people who have spent two decades inside EU energy policy: Thomas Nowak (heat pumps and buildings), Dušan Jakovljević (industrial energy efficiency) and Heike Winkler (offshore wind and the North Sea).
The conversation treats EUSEW as a mirror. What it foregrounds, and what it sidelines, tracks whatever the Commission has in vogue, from hydrogen to carbon capture, often at the expense of people, consumers and energy poverty.
What we get into:
Why a convening that reflects priorities struggles to set them, and how limited slots turn the agenda into a zero-sum game

Electrification as the efficient core of the system, and the "primary energy fallacy" still used against it

Re-industrialisation, green hydrogen and jobs, and where a top-down European approach might have moved faster

The single market's unfinished business, and the real cost of member-state deviations

Why EUSEW keeps talking to the already-convinced, and how to bring member states and silos into the same room

Parallel agendas, from the New European Bauhaus to energy poverty and citizen advisory hubs, and the risk of fragmentation

A stocktake of what changed, what was harder than it should have been, and what a fair, socially accepted transition still demands.

Energ'Ethic, with Marine Cornelis of Next Energy Consumer: the energy transition examined through the people it touches and the systems that govern it. 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 

Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon

© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

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

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

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.

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.

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 

Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon

© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

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