Guess What Industry Millennials Are Killing Now?

We’re trying to take the power into our own hands—literally.

Not content to destroy paper napkins, cereal, diamonds, and golf, Millennials are now trying to take down the very systems that control power.

Not, like, political systems. (Not yet, anyway.)

More like… utility companies.

Millennials and Their iPhones Are Killing Your Old Power Company

“The conventional utility model is dying,” says Peter Terium, chief executive officer of Innogy SE, a unit of Essen, Germany-based RWE AG. “If you don’t adapt now, it’s hard to see how you’re going to survive.”

Millennials are taking the power into their own hands through smartphone apps like Nest and… I don’t know, Hue? Part of me thinks this article is a little overblown; even though we’re buying our fancy controllable lightbulbs and thermostats, they’re still pulling electricity and gas from the same old power systems as before, right?

Well, maybe if you’re in the United States. In Europe, as Bloomberg explains, things are different:

Fully “smart” systems that optimize each stage of the process are evolving the world over, but nowhere are utilities embracing the transition more urgently than in Europe, where political leaders and regulators view man-made climate change as settled science.

A “smart” power system might only generate as much power as is needed, use wind and solar technology, and travel through “a patchwork of interconnected local grids that can operate outside the old network with the swipe of a finger.”

Which all sounds great. But we’re a long way off from the future Bloomberg envisions, where a Smart Apartment knows just how much power you need to get your morning shower to the preferred temperature and reaches out to a local wind drone to provide it. A lot of Millennials are still dreaming of the day when they have an apartment with a shower that doesn’t have decades of grime and mildew layered under chipped caulking. After all, there’s one more word that is commonly attributed to this particular generation:

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