Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 214, 547-569 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2012-01705-1

Regular Article

The emerging energy web

¹ Department of Electronic Network and Telecommunication, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
² IMDEA Network Institute, Madrid, Spain
³ Queen Mary University of London, London UK
⁴ Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
⁵ ABB Switzerland Ltd, Corporate Research, Baden-Dättwil, Switzerland
⁶ JRC Petten, The Netherlands
⁷ Department of Applied Science and Technology Politecnico di Torino, Italy
⁸ ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

^a e-mail: marco.ajmone@polito.it
^b e-mail: d.k.arrowsmith@qmul.ac.uk
^c e-mail: wolfgang.breymann@zhaw.ch
^d e-mail: oliver.fritz@ch.abb.com
^e e-mail: marcelo.masera@ec.europa.eu
^f e-mail: anna.mengolini@ec.europa.eu
^g e-mail: anna.carbone@polito.it

Received: 1 August 2012
Revised: 9 October 2012
Published online: 5 December 2012

Abstract

There is a general need of elaborating energy-effective solutions for managing our increasingly dense interconnected world. The problem should be tackled in multiple dimensions -technology, society, economics, law, regulations, and politics- at different temporal and spatial scales. Holistic approaches will enable technological solutions to be supported by socio-economic motivations, adequate incentive regulation to foster investment in green infrastructures coherently integrated with adequate energy provisioning schemes. In this article, an attempt is made to describe such multidisciplinary challenges with a coherent set of solutions to be identified to significantly impact the way our interconnected energy world is designed and operated.