BECKER BUTTNER HELD PARTNERSCHAFT

Their core work

BBH is a major German law and consulting firm specializing in energy law, regulatory frameworks, and business model design for the energy transition. In H2020 projects, they contribute legal and regulatory expertise — analyzing market barriers, designing enabling frameworks for renewable energy uptake, and developing business models for electromobility and decentralised energy systems. Their value lies in translating complex EU and national energy regulation into actionable strategies for project consortia.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

BBH's early H2020 work (2015-2017, IndustRE) centered on industrial electricity demand, grid flexibility, and integrating variable renewables into industrial processes — a supply-side, market-mechanism focus. By 2020, their involvement shifted toward user-facing and community-driven topics: electromobility business models, community energy, and decentralised systems. The trajectory shows a clear move from wholesale energy market design toward citizen-centric and local energy transition frameworks.

BBH is moving toward decentralised, citizen-facing energy models — expect future involvement in energy communities regulation, local energy markets, and EV integration policy.

How they like to work

BBH operates exclusively as a supporting partner or third-party expert, never leading consortia — consistent with a legal advisory role rather than a research-driving one. With 50 unique partners across 12 countries from just 3 projects, they plug into large, multi-national consortia (typically CSA and IA schemes). This makes them a reliable specialist contributor: easy to integrate, low coordination overhead, and focused on delivering regulatory and business model expertise.

Despite only three projects, BBH has worked with 50 different partners across 12 countries, reflecting their role in large coordination and innovation action consortia spread across the EU.

What sets them apart

BBH brings something most energy research consortia lack: deep legal and regulatory expertise from practitioners who advise real energy companies daily. While universities and research institutes analyze policy theoretically, BBH contributes practical knowledge of how energy regulation works on the ground in Germany and the EU. For consortium builders, they fill the critical "regulatory and business model" work package that reviewers increasingly demand.

Highlights from their portfolio

• COME RES
  Directly addresses EU community energy policy across multiple member states — highly relevant as the Clean Energy Package drives national transposition of energy community rules.
• USER-CHI
  Tackles EV charging infrastructure interoperability along TEN-T corridors, combining transport and energy policy — a growing cross-sector regulatory challenge.