Community Energy Initiatives Research Articles

Growing community energy initiatives from the bottom up: Simulating the role of behavioural attitudes and leadership in the Netherlands

Local energy initiatives (LEIs) are communities of households who self-organize to meet their energy demand with locally produced green energy. They facilitate citizen participation by developing context-specific solutions, which calls for leadership and complex social dynamics. We present an agent-based simulation model to explore the formation of community energy initiatives from the bottom-up, accounting for social networks and evolution of opinions facilitating or hindering LEIs. Our novel model relies on well-established social theories and uses empirical data on community energy systems in the Netherlands and individual citizens’ preferences. Specifically, our computational model captures behavioural drivers and social value orientations, and relates individuals behavioural traits to aggregated stylized facts about energy initiatives at the community level. The results indicate that when communities lack participants with cooperative orientation, altruistic citizens with prosocial social value orientations become essential for the creation of LEIs, revealing different pathways to achieve public good benefits. Our analysis systematically demonstrate that leaders can be a bottleneck in the LEIs’ formation and that an increase in initiators is conducive to the creation of LEIs. Therefore, policies aiming at increasing the number of community initiatives should target small groups and individuals with the leadership potential, who could lead projects, and explore synergies with wider community benefits.

Power to the people? Implications of the Clean Energy Package for the role of community ownership in Europe's energy transition

AbstractSince the 1970s, citizens have organized through community energy initiatives to take ownership of renewable energy production. The European Union’s (EU) new Clean Energy for All Europeans Legislative Package (CEP) now formally recognizes this set of actors as ‘renewable’ and ‘citizen’ energy communities. This article aims to assess whether the CEP – namely the recast Renewable Energy Directive and the energy market design legislation – guarantees the role of energy communities in Europe’s energy transition. The article demonstrates how, due to their lack of recognition at EU level, internal energy market and competition rules, including the 2014 Guidelines on State Aid for Environmental Protection and Energy (EEAG), have overlooked the unique characteristics and challenges of energy communities, raising legal issues around equality and non‐discrimination. Ultimately, the article concludes that the CEP establishes an unprecedented framework with potential to support community ownership in the energy sector. However, transposition and implementation will test the legal strength of the new rules, as will the revision of the EEAG. The results of these processes will reinforce or impede the growth of energy communities throughout Europe.

User engagement in community energy schemes: A case study at the Trent Basin in Nottingham, UK

‘Community Energy’ refers to people working together to reduce and manage energy use and increase and support local energy generation. It has the potential to support the infrastructural, social and cultural changes needed to reduce the impact of climate change and increase energy security. The core part of community energy initiatives is people; therefore, successful engagement strategies are essential. SCENe (Sustainable Community Energy Networks) was a research and development project focused on community energy application in a real-world setting involving in its first phase 44 new homes built along the banks of Nottingham’s River Trent (UK). The project team adopted a variety of established and innovative engagement strategies including website and social media channels, an online platform, a physical community energy hub where meetings and workshops were held and an interactive virtual energy model could be accessed, and in-home smart voice-controlled and visual technologies. The influence of the project and the effectiveness of the engagement tools to generate behaviour changes were investigated through a survey, workshops and interviews. The results suggest that engagement with SCENe increased awareness of energy issues and supported wider participation in community initiatives.

Status and Evolution of the Community Energy Sector in Italy

Community energy (CE) initiatives have been progressively spreading across Europe and are increasingly proposed as innovative and alternative approaches to guarantee higher citizen participation in the transition toward cleaner energy systems. This paper focuses the attention on Italy, a Southern European country characterized by relatively low CE sector development. It fills a gap in the literature by eliciting and presenting novel and comprehensive evidence on recent Italian CE sector developments. Through a stepwise approach it systematically maps and reviews Italian CE initiatives, to then focus the attention on three specific case studies to further explore conditions for development as well as of success within the Italian energy system. The analysis presents an Italian CE sector still at its niche level, characterized by small initiatives largely dependent on national photovoltaics (PV) policy support. It also points out how only larger initiatives, able to operate at national scale, developing multiple projects and differentiating their activities have managed to continue growing at the time of discontinuity of policy support and contraction of the national renewable energy market. Recent EU and national legislative development might support revived development of CE initiatives in Italy.

Is community energy really non-existent in post-socialist Europe? Examining recent trends in 16 countries

Community energy (CE) initiatives are developing in many regions of the world through a great diversity of typologies. Europe has a leading role with thousands of ongoing projects of small and medium size, which are however unevenly distributed over the continent. The density of CE projects is highest in North-Western and parts of Central Europe; on the contrary, their spread in post-socialist European countries (PSECs) has been reported to be much more limited. However, the (under)development of CE in PSECs remains an understudied topic in the literature. In this paper, we present an exploratory overview of the situation and briefly discuss its potential explanatory factors for 16 PSECs. We find differing development levels of progress, with Croatia outstanding with a diversity of projects and a certain maturation of the field, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia with a reduced number of rather small-scale projects, while in the remaining countries no operational relevant projects have been found to date. We present our methods, overviews by country and some tentative explanations. We suggest further research to be directed towards in-depth analysis of single countries and relevant project cases in PSECs.

In it for the money, the environment, or the community? Motives for being involved in community energy initiatives

Community energy initiatives can foster a sustainable energy transition by promoting sustainable energy behaviour in the communities in which they are embedded. This raises the question of what motivates people to become involved in these initiatives. We investigated the importance of financial, environmental, and communal motives for initiative involvement. We propose that communal motives (i.e., being involved in one’s local community) may be related to initiative involvement, as community energy initiatives not only aim to promote sustainable energy behaviour but also enable people to be involved in their community. Across three studies, respondents rated financial and environmental motives as more important than communal motives for their involvement in community energy initiatives. Yet, environmental and communal motives were uniquely related to initiative involvement, while financial motives were not. The discrepancy between which motives people rate as important and which motives actually relate to their initiative involvement suggests that financial motives are an overrated motive, while communal motives are an underrated motive for involvement in community energy initiatives. Our results suggest that targeting communal motives may be an additional way to enhance involvement in community energy initiatives and foster sustainable behaviour among people, who may not otherwise be interested in environmental protection.

Using a Gaussian Graphical Model to Explore Relationships Between Items and Variables in Environmental Psychology Research.

Exploratory analyses are an important first step in psychological research, particularly in problem-based research where various variables are often included from multiple theoretical perspectives not studied together in combination before. Notably, exploratory analyses aim to give first insights into how items and variables included in a study relate to each other. Typically, exploratory analyses involve computing bivariate correlations between items and variables and presenting them in a table. While this is suitable for relatively small data sets, such tables can easily become overwhelming when datasets contain a broad set of variables from multiple theories. We propose the Gaussian graphical model as a novel exploratory analyses tool and present a systematic roadmap to apply this model to explore relationships between items and variables in environmental psychology research. We demonstrate the use and value of the Gaussian graphical model to study relationships between a broad set of items and variables that are expected to explain the effectiveness of community energy initiatives in promoting sustainable energy behaviors.

Social Innovation in Community Energy in Europe: A Review of the Evidence

Citizen-driven Renewable Energy (RE) projects of various kinds, known collectively as community energy (CE), have an important part to play in the worldwide transition to cleaner energy systems. On the basis of evidence from 8 European countries, we investigate CE, over approximately the last 50 years (c.1970-2018), through the lens of Social Innovation (SI). We carry out a detailed review of literature around the social dimension of renewable energy; we collect, describe and map CE initiatives from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK; and we unpack the SI concept into 4 operational criteria which we suggest are essential to recognising SI in CE. These are: 1) Crises and opportunities; 2) the agency of civil society; 3) reconfiguration of social practices, institutions and networks; 4) new ways of working. We identify three main phases of SI in CE. The environmental movements of the 1960s and the “oil shocks” of the 1970s provided the catalyst for a series of innovative societal responses around energy and self-sufficiency. A second wave of SI relates to the mainstreaming of RE and associated government support mechanisms. In this phase, with some important exceptions, successful CE initiatives were mainly confined to those countries where they were already embedded as innovators in the previous phase. The third phase of CE innovation relates to the societal response to the Great Recession that began in 2007-8 and lasted most of the subsequent decade. CE initiatives formed around this time were also strongly focused around democratization of energy and citizen empowerment in the context of rising energy prices, a weak economy, and a production and supply system dominated by excessively powerful multinational energy firms. CE initiatives today are more diverse than at any time previously, and are likely to continue to act as incubators for pioneering initiatives addressing virtually all aspects of energy. However, large multinational energy firms remain the dominant vehicle for delivery of the energy transition, and the apparent excitement in European policy circles for “community energy” does not extend to democratization of energy or genuine empowerment of citizens.

A multi-dimensional assessment of the environmental and socioeconomic performance of community-based sustainability initiatives in Europe

The contribution of community-based initiatives towards sustainability transitions is of growing interest. However, systematic, quantitative, and comparative assessments of their potential impact across different environmental, social, and economic dimensions are scarce. In this paper, we present a multi-dimensional assessment of 37 initiatives grouped in the following typologies: community gardens, solidarity purchasing groups, food cooperatives, community energy, recycling, and mobility initiatives. We provide evidence of the capacity of community-based sustainability initiatives to promote effective and efficient low-carbon solutions, social capital and inclusion, human capital, economic impact, and innovation. We show that, thanks in particular to their environmental effects, community energy initiatives are the best performing, although their social impact is weak. The opposite is true for community gardens. Mobility and recycling initiatives rank lower but can obtain meaningful impacts if they engage intensively within their communities. Food cooperatives and purchasing groups have the weakest effects. However, we show that results for individual initiatives are variable—indicating that the specific activities undertaken are less important than how they are conducted. Moreover, the best-performing initiatives are usually active in more than one typology, showing that diversification is an asset. We also show some interesting correlations between the degree of diversity of participants that initiatives can attract, their propensity to diffuse knowledge, and their creativity in finding carbon-efficient solutions. Finally, top-ranked initiatives overall rarely appear at the top of any separate assessment criterion: the possibility of a community-led transition rests on their performance across several dimensions combined.

Come Together—The Development of Swedish Energy Communities

Community energy (CE) and grassroots innovations have been widely studied in recent years, especially in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, but very little focus has been placed on Sweden. This paper describes and analyses the development and present state of several types of community energy initiatives in Sweden. The methodology uses interviews, document studies, analysis of previous studies, and website analysis. The results show that fewer initiatives have been taken in Sweden than in other countries, but that even with a rather ‘hostile’ institutional setting CE has emerged as a phenomenon. Wind cooperatives are the most common form of initiative, with solar photovoltaics cooperatives and eco-villages also prominent. The various types of initiatives differ considerably, from well-organized wind cooperatives that have grown into professional organizations to small-scale hydroelectric power plants owned by a rural community. The initiatives may have modest impact on the energy transition in quantitative terms, but they are crucial in knowledge sharing and as inspirations for future initiatives.

Can community energy initiatives motivate sustainable energy behaviours? The role of initiative involvement and personal pro-environmental motivation

Community energy initiatives aim to promote sustainable energy behaviours. Personal pro-environmental motivation may influence involvement in these initiatives as well as sustainable energy behaviours. This raises the question whether initiative involvement is uniquely associated with sustainable energy behaviours when accounting for personal pro-environmental motivation. A large-scale questionnaire study among members and non-members of 29 community energy initiatives revealed that different types of personal pro-environmental motivation were indeed related to initiative involvement and sustainable energy intentions and behaviours. Yet, initiative involvement—membership and identification—was generally also uniquely related to sustainable energy intentions and behaviours. Besides, personal pro-environmental motivation and initiative involvement were both uniquely related to broader pro-environmental and communal intentions.

Positive energies? An empirical study of community energy participation and attitudes to renewable energy

It has been suggested that participation in community energy initiatives may play an important role in enabling a transition towards renewable energy (RE) deployment by fostering positive attitudes toward renewables. Yet, little is known about how members of community energy initiatives differ from non-members in terms of energy attitudes and whether different profiles of community energy members exist. This article empirically analyses the relations between community energy membership and attitudes toward RE and onshore wind energy. Based on statistical analyses of a large-scale quantitative dataset from an original survey (N = 3963) conducted with two energy cooperatives in Belgium, it contrasts different groups of cooperative members with each other and a comparison group of non-members. Results show that members have significantly more positive attitudes towards RE than non-members. Results also suggest that non-members tend to be more indifferent or more uncertain, not more objecting, than members to wind power. Finally, significant differences among cooperative members are highlighted, illustrating the contrast between communities of place and communities of interest. The findings suggest a novel perspective on the benefits of community energy membership – to overcome indifference or uncertainty – that is relevant to foster a rapid and socially acceptable low carbon transition.

The adaptation of Dutch energy policy to emerging area-based energy practices

This paper sheds a light on how local conditions affect renewable energy innovation. As empirical case, we study an energy transition policy regulation in the Netherlands: the zip code-rose regulation (PCR) intended for community energy initiatives. Firstly, we analyse the capacity of the PCR to facilitate the accommodation of renewable energy projects by community energy initiatives. Secondly, we analyse how emerging area-based energy practices are feeding back into the energy policy system. Based on empirical evidence from a desk study and interviews with community energy initiatives and key governance actors we find that the policy does provide a modest incentive for initiatives to develop renewable energy projects under local conditions. Nevertheless, the policy falls short of allowing initiatives to openly seek for locally desired solutions and hence, to increase opportunities at a local level to develop projects based on local conditions. However, current difficulties with the policy are being considered at a national level urging for adaptation of Dutch energy policies.

Community energy initiatives to alleviate fuel poverty: the material politics of Energy Cafés

ABSTRACTCommunity action has an increasingly prominent role in the debates surrounding transitions to sustainability. Initiatives such as community energy projects, community gardens, local food networks and car sharing clubs provide new spaces for sustainable consumption, and combinations of technological and social innovations. These initiatives, which are often driven by social good rather than by pure monetary motives, have been conceptualised as grassroots innovations. Previous research in grassroots innovations has largely focused on conceptualising such initiatives and analysing their potential for replication and diffusion; there has been less research in the politics involved in these initiatives. We examine grassroots innovations as forms of political engagement that is different from the 1970s’ alternative technology movements. Through an analysis of community-run Energy Cafés in the United Kingdom, we argue that while present-day grassroots innovations appear less explicitly political than their predecessors, they can still represent a form of political participation. Through the analytical lens of material politics, we investigate how Energy Cafés engage in diverse – explicit and implicit, more or less conscious – forms of political engagement. In particular, their work to “demystify” clients’ energy bills can unravel into various forms of advocacy and engagement with energy technologies and practices in the home. Some Energy Café practices also make space for a needs-driven approach that acknowledges the embeddedness of energy in the household and wider society.

A Community Energy Transition Model for Urban Areas: The Energy Self-Reliant Village Program in Seoul, South Korea

While community energy initiatives are on the rise, community actions for energy transition in Asian countries have rarely been studied. While it is difficult for community energy initiatives to develop spontaneously in Seoul, there are some success stories there. This study places these successes in context. It analyzes municipal documents, including unpublished materials from municipal meetings, in order to examine how the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) created enabling conditions for promoting community energy initiatives. This study also conducted interviews to explore unsolved issues related to the Energy Self-Reliant Village (ESV) program. The SMG encouraged collective action through financial, administrative, and informational support. Also, this study found that Seoul’s ESV program fostered communities by raising the sense of locality and responsibility and community spirit through various educational programs. The ESV program supported the continuity of community by providing guidelines that relieved the burden on community members. The SMG played a significant role in promoting community engagement in energy transition by affecting internal and external conditions. This study provides meaningful insights that other municipalities, especially large urban areas, can follow to foster community actions for energy transition.

ICT for Community Energy

Community energy initiatives are becoming more and more widespread. For them to be successful and flourish, engagement from people in the community is a prerequisite. ICT can provide the means to support engagement, by helping people to assess the impact and benefits of a CE project and by capturing and disseminating the benefits. Also, ICT can support with the design and management of a CE project; and lastly ICT can support research on the topic

Community energy and social entrepreneurship: Addressing purpose, organisation and embeddedness of renewable energy projects

In many European countries, renewable energy has evolved through decentralised and small-scale forms of organisation. These different initiatives are often denominated as community energy in both research and practice. By examining community energy initiatives through a social entrepreneurship lens, we develop an integrated approach for the analysis of small-scale and bottom up energy initiatives. Our approach relies on three specific analytical dimensions: the purpose of the initiative, its form of organisation and ownership, and its embeddedness into local community or wider social movements. We apply this analytical framework to four case studies selected from a larger empirical study on newly emerged forms of organisation in the field of renewable energy across the European Union. Drawing on our findings, we characterise social enterprises in the energy sector as collectively owned organisations that combine renewable energy production with more overarching goals of environmental and social transformation, and a specific quest for civic participation. These initiatives show strong relationships with different social movements and even a potential to transcend the local scale. We conclude that given similarities in the two areas of research provide fertile ground for mutual advancement, both conceptually and empirically.

Generating community, generating justice? The production and circulation of value in community energy initiatives

In this paper, we explore the potentialities and interconnections between existing and hypothetical community energy systems and the concept of generative justice. New York State’s more recent official energy plan, for instance, includes provisions for community-scale microgrids, and several European nations offer significant financial support to citizens interested in building micro and intermediate-scale renewable energy systems. Such efforts and technologies appear to promise some degree of generative justice, returning much of the value generated by distributed renewable energy back to the community producing it. However, most currently conceived and implemented community energy systems recirculate value in very narrow and limited ways. Building upon an analysis of New York energy policy and on-the-ground cases, we explore community energy’s potential. What kinds of value are being generated by community energy systems and for whom? How could such efforts be more generative of justice across a broad range of values, not just electrons and dollars? Through the attempt to broaden thinking not only about community energy systems but also the concept of generative justice, we connect technological and organizational configurations of community energy systems and the forms of value they have the potential to generate: including, the production of grassroots energy and organizational expertise, the capacity for local and personal autonomy in energy planning and decision-making, and the enhancement of an affective sense and embodied experience of community. Finally, we examine some of the barriers to realizing more generatively just community energy systems.

Community: a powerful label? Connecting wind energy to rural Ireland

Much of the research on the social sustainability of renewable technologies has focused on local acceptance issues, community benefits from exogenous developments, and matters related to the planning and development process. Grassroots-initiated wind energy schemes as a form of rural enterprise have received less attention, especially in the Irish context. Using a case study approach, this paper analyses the challenges and opportunities faced in progressing community wind energy projects in rural Ireland. Such an analysis is especially relevant given Ireland’s commitment to developing a fair and sustainable society as advocated in its Sustainable Development Framework. With the decline of agriculture and considerable outmigration from rural areas, wind energy represents an opportunity to revitalize rural economies. More generally, as opposition to wind turbines and associated infrastructure is common in Ireland, it is clear that the relevant authorities must engage local stakeholders more meaningfully in the planning and development process. In this vein, community energy initiatives have the potential to boost rural economies, enhance acceptance, and develop knowledge networks at the local level. Drawing lessons from a community wind energy case study, it is argued that community projects can be nurtured in Ireland by (i) engaging communities, especially weak stakeholders, in both agenda setting and the planning and development process for individual projects, and (ii) ensuring that technical and financial support is available to communities, while (iii) being careful to apply the ‘community’ label only to initiatives that can meet the expectations of such a project.

The emergence and diffusion of grassroots energy innovations: Building an interdisciplinary approach

This paper highlights the role of grassroots innovations in enhancing the use of renewable energy sources and proposes a conceptual interdisciplinary framework to analyze their emergence and diffusion in future empirical studies. Drawing on previous literature on grassroots innovations and preliminary empirical studies, our approach contributes to grassroots innovation and energy research and highlights the connections between culture, everyday life and community energy initiatives. We stress the need to study individual and community level behavior and everyday practices in multiple cultural contexts in order to gain deeper understanding on how grassroots innovations emerge. Our study also emphasizes the need to examine the paths how grassroots innovations diffuse.