Who Should Own the Residual Rights over Distributed Resources?

Residual rights are the right to choose asset uses not specified in the contract. They are essential in situations of uncertainty. The current energy transition presents a greater variety of assets. Moreover, it is impossible to anticipate all relevant states that the assets and the environment can embody, making it impossible to optimize them contractually. Furthermore, there is consensus that the transition must occur quickly, which means high levels of investment in new specific assets. How should we distribute property rights to maximize social benefits in a context with specific and dispersed assets? Because of the complementarity between network and distributed resources, this article questions the premise that deverticalization is invariably beneficial to consumers and argues for the need to revise the concept of network and develop the regulatory implications of such a reconceptualization. We defend the need to evaluate alternative network concepts considering the technological repertoire available to operationalize them. When considering the technological repertoire available today, characterized by the competitiveness of information and communications technology (ICT) and distributed resources, we should recognize the inherently incomplete nature of the contracts signed between network operators and users.