Demand Side Management in a competitive European market: Who should be responsible for its implementation?

Demand side management (DSM), more specifically energy efficiency, is standing in the spotlight due to the Kyoto commitments. An additional factor, the liberalization of the electricity markets, causes every country to review its own DSM activities. Especially in Europe, where the directive for opening the electricity market has a direct impact on the current DSM frameworks, governments will have to consider a change in this framework. In order to achieve this, much research has been done in the past years on how to change the DSM framework in a way that the requirements of both liberalization and the Kyoto Protocol will be met. In this paper, we review the current DSM activities and ongoing research from the starting point ‘who should be responsible for implementing DSM’. We conclude that countries have to make explicit choices on how to arrange their DSM activities for the different customers groups. They have to be aware of the fact that some combinations of DSM activities will lead to counter-productive results and therefore inefficiency. This paper also investigates which of these DSM activities fits best in the open market; a critical review of Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) is used as a starting point. We agree with various proponents of IRP that planning towards minimal societal costs is theoretically appropriate, looking from a societal point of view. We also indicate in this paper that the planning process IRP is partly applicable in the open market. But looking at the practical application of IRP in the past, we must conclude that there are better alternatives for achieving energy efficient goals in a liberalized market.