Collective Action with Altruists: How Are Citizens Led Renewable Energy Communities Developed?

Abstract

Transition to a sustainable future requires not only technical but also societal changes, including changes in behavioral patterns and consumer roles. Renewable energy communities embody such changes: they are mainly residential communities that break with their passive consumer role and produce energy from renewable sources in order to meet primarily local needs. Although the number of these communities has increased remarkably in the last decade in many Western countries, as has the academic attention paid to them, we still have limited knowledge on how they are formed and operate. It is unclear how they get their members to work collectively on a voluntary basis for a common goal; that is, energy production at the local level, and overcome the challenge of free-riding. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the institutional and social context in which these communities operate, as well as of the way they are created and function. Therefore, the research question addressed is: What factors influence renewable energy communities’ formation and organization? In particular, the interest is in strategies for group formation, task distribution, collective action, communication, decision making, and problem-solving. This paper addresses the research question through a comparative assessment of case studies in Germany and the Netherlands. It analyzes different communities—of distinct sizes, location, and using various technologies—and assesses the commonalities between them and their general practices that led to the successful project implementation. The results show that, contrary to Olson’s expectation about voluntary collective action, renewable energy communities can realize their goals based on the work of only a few volunteers who develop the project without receiving any additional reward and who also accept free-riding. However, the larger the community’s size and the complexity of the project, the more likely it is that they need to formally organize the procedure or count on external support.

Drivers, Motivations, and Barriers in the Creation of Energy Communities: Insights from the City of Segrate, Italy

“…(iii) Social drivers. ECs can be interesting for the social interactions they enable, through strategic networking [19], establishing partnerships [13], and team working [29]. (iv) Technological drivers.…”

Safe havens for energy democracy? Analysing the low-carbon transitions of Danish energy islands

“…We also identified a number of hurdles, barriers and counteracting trade-off effects. On the one hand, we have been able to show that the essential internal community aspects and principles in community energy projects are essential if energy democracy goals are to be achieved (Goedkoop and Devine-Wright 2016;Van Der Schoor et al 2016;Hicks and Ison 2018;Koirala et al 2018;Kooij et al 2018;Broska 2021;Dóci 2021). On the other hand, and in line with existing research, we found that energy democracy cannot be thought of without the fundamental principles of energy justice, which requires equally and equitably distributed access, fair and open processes, and the recognition of all parts of local communities (Goedkoop and Devine-Wright 2016;Forman 2017;van Veelen 2018;van Bommel and Höffken 2021;Hanke et al 2021;Stewart 2021;Droubi et al 2022;Tarhan 2022).…”

Renewable Energy Community: Opportunities and Threats towards Green Transition

“…Of the remaining 37 articles, 15 focus on case studies; for example, Tricarico et al [29] focus on two different Italian case studies to identify the preconditions needed for forming energy communities. Similarly, other studies focus on the drivers needed to promote the creation of energy communities and the conditions needed for those to thrive [30][31][32][33], as the firm reliance on volunteers [34]. This dependency may hinder the growth perspective of the community in the medium-and long-term and discriminate on the kind of participants in the community, selecting only those with the willingness and enough spare time.…”