Is community earning enough? Reflections on engagement processes and drivers in two Italian energy communities

Abstract

The spread of community initiatives in energy production raises many questions and calls for new interpretations on the development of these processes. Among community energy initiatives, community energy enterprises represent specific typologies of organisations based on full community ownership and investment and collaboration schemes with local stakeholders. Through the investigation on two Italian case studies the paper investigates how and why project managers, communities and other local stakeholders operated during different stages of the engagement process. The main objective is to highlight which process features have been crucial for the development of the enterprises and how these have determined the local value added as perceived by the community of investors. The paper concludes with the identification of specific features on how to manage the community engagement process in these initiatives, framing possible competences and strategies to be experimented in the arising community energy sector.