Suchergebnisse

Energy communities (ECs), intended as collective action initiatives in the energy field involving citizens' participation, have been gaining relevance for the past decades as an alternative way to organize the energy chain to challenge the incumbent system. With Europe's recently adopted Clean Energy Package, ECs found a formal recognition by the European Union as potential actors of the transition of the energy system towards a wider and more decentralized use of renewable sources. Although the potential role of ECs in the transition is therefore hardly questionable, a thorough comprehension of the enabling factors that might foster their diffusion and scaling up is still lacking. Through a comparative analysis of the evolutionary trajectories in six EU countries regarding their energy systems, their regulatory frameworks and their historical evolution of ECs, namely through the example of cooperative models, this paper aims at providing some preliminary evidence about the factors and dynamics that seem to have played, and may play, a role in hampering or facilitating EC model diffusion. Attention is therefore specifically paid to three dimensions of analysis referring to: the energy mix and market structure; the institutional and policy landscape; the wider social attitudes towards environmental issues and cooperation among citizens. In addition to providing a wide comparison of different EU countries, the paper shows that the historical evolution pathways have to be carefully taken into account to understand what might trigger ECs exploitation in the EU.

Energy communities (ECs), intended as collective action initiatives in the energy field involving citizens' participation, have been gaining relevance for the past decades as an alternative way to organize the energy chain to challenge the incumbent system. With Europe's recently adopted Clean Energy Package, ECs found a formal recognition by the European Union as potential actors of the transition of the energy system towards a wider and more decentralized use of renewable sources. Although the potential role of ECs in the transition is therefore hardly questionable, a thorough comprehension of the enabling factors that might foster their diffusion and scaling up is still lacking. Through a comparative analysis of the evolutionary trajectories in six EU countries regarding their energy systems, their regulatory frameworks and their historical evolution of ECs, namely through the example of cooperative models, this paper aims at providing some preliminary evidence about the factors and dynamics that seem to have played, and may play, a role in hampering or facilitating EC model diffusion. Attention is therefore specifically paid to three dimensions of analysis referring to: the energy mix and market structure; the institutional and policy landscape; the wider social attitudes towards environmental issues and cooperation among citizens. In addition to providing a wide comparison of different EU countries, the paper shows that the historical evolution pathways have to be carefully taken into account to understand what might trigger ECs exploitation in the EU.

One of the emergent trends in the sustainable energy transition is the development of distributed power generation. In Europe, it is estimated that up half of citizens of the European Union (EU) could be energy self-sufficient, potentially supplying 45% of Europe's final energy demand by 2050 (Kampman, et al., 2016). While there are many challenges with a move towards more distributed, citizen-led energy projects, they are nevertheless supported and promoted by the EU in the RED II (EU Renewable Energy Directive as part of the 2016 "Clean Energy of all Europeans" initiative, directive 2018/2001/EU), which secures the right for citizens and communities to produce, store, consume and sell renewable energy, and other rights such as consumer's protection or access to all energy markets directly or through third parties. Socially, this often takes the form of community energy projects in the form of collective action initiatives (CAI). CAIs, which include energy cooperatives, prosumer networks, and other citizen-led energy projects, are examples of social innovation (Gregg, et al., 2020) in how they organize and gain power through a social movement mechanism. Social innovation is the development of activities and services to meet a social need, and social innovations are primarily social in both their ends and their means. Among other things, energy CAIs are typically characterized by a focus on the community, open and voluntary participation, democratic governance, and autonomy and independence (ICA, 2021). The social benefits of energy CAIs include: developing local economies, addressing energy poverty, raising awareness about sustainable energy, promoting energy justice, giving a voice to the community, developing local skills and promoting social cohesion. Current research on CAIs explores how they are defined and the different ownership structures (Gorroño-Albizu, 2019), and how they mobilize and attain power (Gregg et al., 2020). Other research traces the history of their development within specific contexts or geographical areas, and how they influence or are influenced by national energy policies (Wierling et al., 2018). Still other research uses the lens of organizational and institutional theory to understand the historical development of energy CAIs (Mey and Diesendorf, 2018).