Analysing the potential of citizen-financed community renewable energy to drive Europe's low-carbon energy transition

C Pons-Seres De Brauwer,J.J Cohen

doi:10.1016/j.rser.2020.110300

C Pons-Seres De Brauwer, J.J Cohen

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.110300

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Abstract

In 2018, the real amount invested in the European Union's energy transition fell short of the funding level required to reach the 2030 climate and energy targets by €179 billion. Citizen-led finance in renewable energy development emerges as an innovative tool to bridge this investment gap. However, in spite of the European Union's ambition to involve local communities for co-driving the low-carbon energy transition, there is no comprehensive analysis quantifying citizens' potential to co-finance and participate in community renewable energy initiatives across Europe. We address this knowledge gap through a representative choice experiment survey that collected responses from 16,235 participants to different hypothetical investment options on renewable energy schemes across all European Union Member States, and estimate the social potential of European citizens to participate and invest in community-administered wind farms. Results from a novel survey-based social simulation indicate that €176 billion could be obtained from citizen-led finance in community-administered wind farm developments, enough to halve the investment gap to achieve a 32% renewable energy share in final energy consumption by 2030. Our analysis substantiates the case for facilitating easily accessible, risk-insured community investment options across Europe to unlock citizens' social potential for investing in community renewable energy.

Highlights

Launched in 2015, the Energy Union is the EU’s largest and most ambitious climate and energy legislative effort to fully decarbonise Europe’s energy system by 2050, with a set of intermediate energy and climate targets for 2020 and 2030
4.1 The most preferred investment attributes Following from Step 1, we report the results of an initial estimation of the multinomial logit (MNL) in (4) on the full dataset from all 28 EU Member States (MSs)
This corresponds with the descriptive results obtained from the Choice Experiment (CE) responses, which we interpret as an increased interest from citizens in EU MSs with low wind power capacities to have access to low-risk, trustworthy investment options in this technology

Summary

Introduction

Launched in 2015, the Energy Union is the EU’s largest and most ambitious climate and energy legislative effort to fully decarbonise Europe’s energy system by 2050, with a set of intermediate energy and climate targets for 2020 and 2030 These reflect a 32% share of RE in final energy consumption, a 32.5% improvement in energy efficiency, and a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 1990 baseline levels [1]. Estimates further project that no less than 9% of the foreseen annual investments, at least €34 billion per year, will have to finance the deployment of renewable generation capacity to reach a 32% share of the EU’s final energy consumption by 2030 [5] This translates into a cumulative investment of €340 billion in RE capacity over the 2019-2030 period

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