Between Energy Efficiency and Privacy: Smart Data Under EU Law

The European energy transition has made smart meters a central infrastructure for integrating renewable energy, managing electricity demand and advancing decarbonization; yet these devices do more than optimize the electricity system, as they generate continuous and highly granular data flows that can reveal patterns of behavior, habits and vulnerabilities within its users. Although smart meters were introduced to benefit consumers and support the European Union’s climate objectives, their deployment has created a structural tension between energy and data regulation, resulting in a complex legal framework that is difficult to navigate both for citizens seeking to safeguard their privacy and for companies aiming to innovate and develop new markets in the emerging data economy. Against this background, this article explores how smart meter data is governed in practice at the intersection of EU energy legislation and data protection law, examining the challenges posed by the application of the GDPR in a multifactor electricity system and the implications of the emerging European data economy for the use and sharing of such data.