The ethological right to the efficient use of energy resources as a right of ownership and the real right to environmental use

Abstract

One of the most important challenges facing us in the 21st century is that of sustainability in economic development, so that it is not based only on the consumption of natural resources, typical of a linear economic model, but on their efficient use, typical of a circular economic model, where the use of the resource is not exhausted, but rather regenerated or renewed to give it a new use. One of the pillars on which this efficient use of natural resources must be based is environmental education, so that human behaviour becomes aware of the concept of efficiency in the use of natural resources, especially energy. To this end, the introduction of good practices and new legal solutions is essential, such as the normative recognition of the economic content of natural capital.

On the other hand, the recent energy crisis, derived in part from the somewhat erratic planning of energy production, discarding some of its sources to promote others, has produced a sharp increase in costs, causing economic difficulties for families. The conceptualization and regulation of alternative markets, which allow self-consumption and savings seems an urgent need.

The objective of this article is to introduce into the field of legal doctrine one of these new legal solutions, which is the figure of the real right to ethological use, based on the economic content of the creation of a natural value on a given property, which will allow the legal development of the economic needs that society demands.

However, the application of the traditional doctrine based on the production of subjective rights, derived from the declarations of will of the parties, within a legal relationship of a patrimonial nature poses a series of difficulties. Therefore, the Law must provide new legal solutions, such as that based on the recognition of etiological situations and rights, as a legal solution to the recognition of the patrimonial value of the efficient use of natural resources.

This right is not based on a real legal relationship that combines the active side of the owner of the same, who acquires a direct and immediate power over another’s thing, in attention to the consideration paid to acquire the title and the passive side, in that the owner must allocate the property to a use compatible with maintaining the efficiency in the use of the assigned natural value. It is based on the behaviour of a certain person, the owner of the right of ownership over the property, to whom the consumption of the resources is assigned. This must be used efficiently, through the use of technology, to enable its quantification or measurement, a quality through which it can be granted patrimonial recognition, as a consequence of the benefits it can produce for the general community.