On 27 April, ESCP Business School's MSc in Energy Management (MEM), the ESCP Alumni Energy Group and the ESCP Energy Society co-hosted the Watts & Waves Forum, a full-day event at the Montparnasse campus dedicated to the water-energy nexus. Around 150 alumni, students, practitioners and external professionals ...

On 16 February, the MSc in Energy Management (MEM) Cohort welcomed the International Hydropower Association (IHA) to ESCP’s London campus for a deep dive into one of the world’s most established and increasingly strategic renewable energy technologies: hydropower.

Led by IHA's Matteo Bianciotto, Head ...

Abstract

Europe is scaling wind and solar rapidly, but a renewable power system runs on flexibility, not energy alone. Utility-scale, front-of-the-meter lithium-ion battery storage – meaning grid-connected systems that participate directly in wholesale and balancing markets – is increasingly expected to provide that flexibility. The investment case is attractive in principle yet uncertain in practice because most revenues remain merchant and depend on price spreads, market access rules, and the speed at which competition compresses those spreads. This paper explains how utility-scale batteries earn revenue in European day-ahead, intraday, and ancillary service markets, and why merchant risk translates directly into the cost of capital. Germany serves as the case study because it is Europe’s largest and most liquid merchant-battery market, and therefore a practical stress test for revenue stacking, saturation and bankability. A stylised financing illustration, anchored to identified empirical downside drivers, shows that a fragile downside cash-flow distribution can raise a project’s weighted average cost of capital by several percentage points. The central finding is that merchant-only revenue stacking can support utility-scale battery investment, but that bankability becomes fragile at scale unless downside cash flows remain resilient under spread compression, ancillary service saturation, and policy or fee uncertainty.

Highlights

• Evaluating energy poverty across a sample of 32 economies from 2004 to 2021.
• Data from the EU-SILC database and Eurostat were utilised.
• Fixed-effect regression models were used to identify factors influencing energy poverty at the household level.
• Strategies for addressing energy poverty include enhancing housing conditions and lowering electricity expenses.
• Households that are low-income, smaller in size, and in poor condition are more vulnerable to energy poverty.

Abstract

The domain of energy poverty is increasingly recognised as a multifaceted global challenge stemming from limited income, high energy costs, and inefficient housing. The issue affects different social groups and regions unevenly, even within Europe. This paper investigates energy poverty across 32 economies, including EU member states and several non-EU European countries, over the period from 2004 to 2021. By analysing micro-level data from the EU-SILC database and Eurostat, the study identifies that low-income households, smaller households, and those living in overcrowded conditions are particularly vulnerable to energy poverty. Interestingly, the research finds that renewable energy does not contribute to alleviating energy poverty in Europe. Based on these results, the study calls for immediate policy measures to improve housing conditions and lower electricity costs, especially for economically disadvantaged households, to effectively address energy poverty.