People Change: Putting Consumers at the heart of the Global Energy Transition - Part One
As the global transition to clean energy gains momentum, there has been much talk of a just energy transition, inclusive energy systems and fairness for all. The importance of these objectives cannot be overstated because today’s fossil-fuelled energy systems are inherently unjust, often imposing the highest costs on the poorest households and leaving many consumers with limited choice or voice.
A transition to renewable energy will not automatically solve these challenges. Without deliberate policies and meaningful consumer participation, new energy systems can reproduce existing inequalities or create new barriers to affordability, access and trust.
We are all consumers of energy. But too often, consumers have been treated as passive recipients of energy policy rather than as people whose experiences, needs and choices should help shape it.
For more than a decade Consumers International has worked to change this. Through our Clean Energy Futures programme, we bring together consumer organisations, policymakers, businesses and international institutions to ensure that consumer needs and experiences inform decisions that shape the global energy transition.
This two-part impact series explores how we are doing that: first by changing the rules and making consumers visible in global energy policy; and then by building the evidence and turning our vision into practical action through our Members and partners.
The Challenge
The global energy system is failing the very people it serves – consumers. Around a quarter of the global population – 2.1 billion people – live in energy poverty without access to clean cooking technologies and fuels. While progress has been made over the past two decades, if current trends continue, 1.8 billion people will still be without access by 2030.
Energy poverty is driven by a combination of factors, including high energy costs, low incomes, inadequate housing and infrastructure, and unequal access to modern energy services. Around 120 million households in advanced economies also struggle to meet their energy needs.
Geopolitical tensions, market volatility, and other disruptions are further exacerbating these challenges, exposing consumers to sudden price increases and worsening existing inequalities.
These challenges affect consumers across different energy systems and can become even more acute during periods of major transition if affordability, inclusion and consumer protection are not built into policy from the outset.
Many consumers, particularly those in more vulnerable circumstances, face impossible cost trade-offs and are powerless to influence how energy systems are designed and implemented.
The Opportunity
Tomorrow’s energy system must work for everyone.
The transition away from fossil fuels is an opportunity to build energy systems that are not only cleaner, but more affordable, resilient, accessible, and responsive to the people who use them.
Distributed energy solutions – such as solar panels, battery storage, electric vehicles, smart appliances and efficient electric heating and cooling – can give households greater control over how they generate, store and use energy. But these benefits are not automatic. They depend on the policies and incentives, markets, information, and consumer protections that surround them.
Demand-side action – deploying clean-tech innovation and changing how people consume energy for things like travel, cooking and powering buildings – could deliver up to 70% of the direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions reductions required by 2050.
Consumers are more than beneficiaries of the energy transition. They are essential participants in driving it forward.
Success therefore depends on ensuring that consumer experience and expertise inform the decisions being made by policymakers, regulators, businesses and international institutions.
Our Impact
Our work focuses on three areas of impact:
- Changing the rules: making consumers visible in global energy policy.
- Building the evidence: demonstrating that consumer-centred approaches deliver better outcomes through research, insights, and practical examples.
- Turning evidence into action: working with energy experts, policymakers and partners to embed consumer-centred solutions in practice.
Together, these objectives provide a pathway to put consumers at the heart of the energy transition.
This first article focuses on the first objective: changing the rules. It explores how Consumers International has worked to ensure that consumers are recognised as essential participants in shaping the global energy transition – and how our evidence and advocacy are beginning to influence the institutions and frameworks that guide it.
Part Two will explore how we build evidence and use it to turn our vision into practical action with our Members and partners.
CHANGING THE RULES: MAKING CONSUMERS VISIBLE IN GLOBAL ENERGY POLICY
Changing the rules means changing more than policies themselves. It means challenging the ideas, assumptions and decision-making processes to better represent the interests of consumers – including how global institutions define a ‘just’ transition.
For many years, energy transition discussions centered largely on technological innovation, infrastructure, and energy supply. Less attention was given to the demand side of the energy system – or to the rights, lived experience and participation of consumers.
We have worked with leading global organisations to address this imbalance, helping to establish consumers as credible and necessary participants in energy policy.
Our journey has been about building credibility and using our expertise and advocacy to influence the institutions shaping the global transition.
Building Credibility
Our current vision for consumer-centred clean energy futures was formed in 2022, when Consumers International joined policymakers and global consumer experts at the Sixth Session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), as part of the Intergovernmental Group of Experts (IGE) on Consumer Protection Law and Policy. At this session, the IGE reviewed the UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection, providing a platform for Consumers International to contribute consumer perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of the clean energy transition.
Our advocacy strengthened relations between consumer organisations and energy stakeholders, prompting a step-change in the way they collaborate. This led to the adoption of ‘consumer protection and the energy transition’ as an agenda topic for the following annual session.
The outcome was significant: a unanimous vote by UNCTAD Member States recognised the crucial role that consumers play in the transition to clean energy, encouraging leaders to empower consumers to make sustainable and informed decisions and to improve consumers' access to clean energy.
This was an important shift. Consumers were no longer being discussed simply as people affected by the transition, but as participants with a role to play in shaping it.
That recognition was a catalyst for our wider engagement with global energy institutions.
Building the Case for Change
Consumers International strengthened this growing momentum in 2023 with the launch of its Consumer Protection and Empowerment for a Clean Energy Future white paper at World Consumer Rights Day.
Drawing on evidence from our Members across eleven countries, representing diverse energy markets and socioeconomic contexts, the research examined real consumer journeys through the clean energy transition. It mapped out the practical barriers consumers face when accessing and adopting new technologies, services and energy systems - and identified the support, information and protections needed to overcome them.
Importantly, the research gave policymakers, regulators, consumer advocates and energy providers a framework for understanding the transition from the consumer perspective. It made the case that consumer protection and participation are not add-ons to a successful energy transition, but conditions for making it work.
The white paper became a foundation for wider advocacy including our Clean Energy Conference: Empowering Consumers Through the Transition. Following an energy supply crisis in Europe and elsewhere the conference brought together leaders from government, business, international organisations and civil society to put consumer experience at the centre of the global energy conversation. By giving consumer perspectives a platform alongside the policymakers and energy leaders shaping the transition, it helped turn the principle of consumer empowerment into a more prominent part of the debate.
BUILDING INFLUENCE
This growing credibility created something more significant than a seat at the table: it gave Consumers International a stronger role in shaping the conversations taking place there.
The shift can be seen in the way consumer evidence has begun to travel into the work of major international institutions – and into the frameworks that influence policy, investment and ultimately the experience of households.
Influencing the IEA
The International Energy Agency (IEA) provides a clear example of this shift. Our evidence and Member case studies fed directly into two key studies supporting people-centred clean energy transitions.
First, the Blueprint for Action on Just and Inclusive Energy Transitions report, produced by the IEA’s Global Commission on People-Centred Clean Energy Transitions, of which Consumers International is a member. This became the first IEA report to explicitly acknowledge consumer organisations’ key contribution to energy policymaking – an important milestone in recognising consumers as active participants in the transition.
The “consumer journey” framework developed through our work helped bring a practical perspective, highlighting the information, support and protections consumers need at each stage of adopting clean energy solutions. Insights from our Clean Energy Futures white paper and our Impact Initiative report, which showcases how more than 25 consumer organisations are helping reshape the clean energy transition, helped bring this perspective to life.
Among the Members featured, Consumentenbond in the Netherlands is cited as a best-practice example for empowering citizens to make informed choices about clean energy.
Second, the Indicators Handbook for Just and Inclusive Energy Transitions – launched at the G20 Energy Transition Ministerial – provides governments with a framework for tracking the benefits of the transition with social as well as economic metrics, while mitigating unintended consequences.
Together, these developments show how consumer evidence can travel beyond individual organisations and become part of the frameworks used by international institutions and governments.
Bringing consumer experience into wider energy debates
The shift is also visible in the wider global conversation about how the energy transition should happen. Alongside speaking to the need for inclusivity and innovation at key forums, Consumers International is increasingly brought into major debates on pressing issues such as electrification. Our contribution to the final communiqué of the Global Energy Transition and Electrification Summit (GETES), co-hosted by UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, E3G, the Global Renewables Alliance and the We Mean Business Coalition, was one such example. Recognition of consumers interests in a high-level international statement such as this matters because electrification will only succeed at scale if people can afford it, understand it and trust the systems and services being offered to them.
Making consumer experience and the expertise of consumer organisations part of these conversations helps shift the definition of a successful energy transition, from one measured only by technological or emissions outcomes to one that also works for the people expected to adopt it.
This is the change we set out to achieve: helping establish consumer organisations as trusted contributors to international energy discussions, ensuring that consumer perspectives are reflected more consistently in the policies, rules and implementation decisions that shape the transition.
What next
Influence at the policy level only delivers results when it leads to change on the ground.
With consumers and the demand-side of energy gaining greater recognition within global energy institutions, our focus is now on ensuring this influence translates into practical action. We are working with global organisations, policymakers and energy stakeholders to shape the investments, market models and services that will determine how the transition is experienced by households around the world.
Together, this work can help move consumer empowerment from a recognised principle to a measurable reality: building trust, improving access to clean energy solutions and delivering fairer outcomes for consumers.
In Part two we explore how our Members are turning this ambition into action, from piloting One-Stop-Shop models to building partnerships with progressive energy businesses.