b. Legal persons
Because prosumption is rooted in the idea of consumers becoming more active in the electricity system, prosumers are most commonly understood to be natural persons. However, as in other areas of law, legal persons are to a certain extent equated with natural persons. Can we extend this equation to prosumption? In other words, can legal persons be prosumers too?
In principle, there does not seem to be any obstacle to legal persons being prosumers. There are cases where a legal person acts as a prosumer that should clearly be covered by the definition. For example, the use of solar panels installed on a factory building owned by a company will be an act of prosumption by that company. However, the geographical presence of a company is often not limited to a single location, and a company might have several establishments that have consumption and generation capabilities. In this case, the overarching legal person will be the prosumer, and not the separate factories, since they do not have legal personality. This determination can have important consequences if regulation imposes maximum limits on energy prosumption.(1) See below in the case of European energy law. However, the prosumer qualification remains linked to the original legal person and cannot be transferred through a chain of ownership.(2) The activities that give rise to the prosumer qualification are linked to the original player and exist independent of the investor’s own energy use. An extensive interpretation taking into account the entire chain of ownership would not have a clear end, and would risk hollowing out the prosumer concept.