Designing Collaborative Energy Communities: A European Overview

Abstract

Renewable energy has a crucial role in facing climate change. One promising strategy is the creation of energy communities that require active involvement from a bottom-up perspective. Their implementation is difficult, as they currently rely on local policies, community readiness, and technological availability. The objective of this paper is to provide a qualitative overview of energy community concepts and strategies at the European level. The aim is to identify common approaches that are framing the development of energy communities, and to understand the most successful steps leading to their creation and growth. To achieve this objective, a threefold methodology is provided: (1) an updated review on policies dealing with energy communities at the European and Italian level; (2) a qualitative overview of European-funded projects under the Horizon 2020 work program; and (3) a qualitative overview of some of the most successful existing energy communities in Europe. The results outline a series of considerations and lessons learned that are useful for implementing this transition pathway in a real case, which is also presented in the paper. The conclusions will identify some future directions of this research, particularly in relation to the results coming from the implementation of actions in the real case.

Energy Community in Action—Energy Citizenship Contract as Tool for Climate Neutrality

“…• a qualitative literature review on climate, social and energy contract concept, employing Scopus database (https://www.scopus.com/, accessed on 18 November 2021) and Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/, accessed on 20 November 2021), was run focusing on its applicability in energy transition processes at community level; • a bottom-up analysis performed examining case studies of already constituted energy communities, benefitting from a previous publication from the GRETA project [17] that provides a more general qualitative overview of successful strategies that supported energy communities setting up and growing. The present research mainly focuses on the contracts that rule their institution and on social innovative measures and participative approaches as main driving factors.…”

“…The CEC's definition differs from the REC's one, because the CEC's activities concern only the electricity sectors [21]. Moreover, CECs specifically focus on the return of benefits to the community's members, stakeholders or to the local area where the community operates and are not linked to a proximity level geographical dimension, as for the RECs [17]. CECs represent, in general, a "potentially more inclusive model than RECs, since participation is not restricted to a specific location" [21] p. 4.…”

“…Finally, the paper presents the first participatory initiatives carried out in the Italian GRETA case study, located in Bologna, previously introduced in [17].…”

Optimal Fuzzy-Based Energy Management Strategy to Maximize Self-Consumption of PV Systems in the Residential Sector in Ecuador

“…For instance, one country that recognizes it is Spain, where the recent Royal Decree 23/2020 defines the concept of ECs [25]. Similar situations were reported for Italy [26], Austria [27], and Germany [28] among others [29]. By contrast, in Romania's current legislation in force, Order 165 16/09/2020, ECs have not been transposed [30].…”

Renewable Energy Community Pairing Methodology Using Statistical Learning Applied to Georeferenced Energy Profiles

“…This is expected as research supports policy development, and many issues only start to arise, when concepts are put into practice. Authors in [8] provide an overview of success factors that may influence, the creation and growth of energy communities. They point out the great contribution of research projects under the European Frameworks to the study, tool development, and consumer engagement regarding REC.…”