Surviving the Energy Transition: Development of a Proposal for Evaluating Sustainable Business Models for Incumbents in Germany’s Electricity Market

In the light of Germany’s chosen path towards the energy transition, the regulatory framework has changed considerably. New players have succeeded in entering the market, and renewable energies have become increasingly competitive. Greater electrification of the transport and heating sectors will be...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energies (Basel) 2020-02, Vol.13 (3), p.730
Main Authors: Wagner, Oliver, Adisorn, Thomas, Tholen, Lena, Kiyar, Dagmar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business models
Commercial energy
Competition
Electricity
Electricity distribution
Electrification
Energy
energy companies
Energy industry
energy market
energy transition
Evaluation
Fossil fuels
Liberalization
Market shares
Multiple criterion
Nuclear energy
Power plants
Strategic planning
Sustainability
Sustainable development
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Summary:In the light of Germany’s chosen path towards the energy transition, the regulatory framework has changed considerably. New players have succeeded in entering the market, and renewable energies have become increasingly competitive. Greater electrification of the transport and heating sectors will be needed in the future to achieve national climate targets. Against this background, Germany’s big energy companies need to be sure that their sales will increase. However, they were unable to anticipate this development, and made strategic mistakes in the past. The development of sustainable business models in line with the energy transition failed to materialize. Now it is becoming increasingly clear that companies must create new business models to survive in the long term. These business models have to keep with the tradition, whilst meeting the needs of low-carbon power supplies. In this paper, we will examine the past and future challenges of the four energy companies and develop a proposal for evaluating sustainable business models. For this purpose, we use the multi-level perspective to categorize developments in the electricity market over the last 50 years, and then apply a multi-criteria analysis to derive five suitable business models from the results.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en13030730