Key Drivers and Future Scenarios of Local Energy and Flexibility Markets

This paper explores the key drivers of local energy and flexibility markets, develops a set of plausible future scenarios for these markets, and analyzes the scenarios' impact. The results can provide insight to policymakers, researchers, system operators, and aggregators in a better design and more successful implementation of local markets. This study is based on the well-established scenario planning technique of "intuitive logics" and it is conducted by means of qualitative methods, surveys, and cross-impact analysis. Results explore and rank the impact and uncertainty of 20 key factors and trends which can affect the future of local energy and flexibility markets. The results show that factors related to the availability of active and smart end-users, and regulatory incentives are the most impactful and uncertain ones in the future of local markets. Four future scenarios are introduced based on these factors and their impacts are discussed.