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

Abstract

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 NorthWestern and parts of Central Europe; on the contrary, their spread in postsocialist 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.

Context and agency in urban community energy initiatives: An analysis of six case studies from the Baltic Sea Region

“…The case of the Housing Community in Szczecin shows that although some favourable formal institutions may exist these are not enough to steer widespread CE development when there are weak informal institutions. In former socialist countries, there is mistrust towards CE initiatives (Capellán-Pérez et al, 2020).…”

Building a Common Support Framework in Differing Realities—Conditions for Renewable Energy Communities in Germany and Bulgaria

“…There are currently no known RECs in Bulgaria based on their description in Art. 22 of the RED II [13,54]. However, initiatives similar to RECs have been established in recent years.…”

“…In the EU, while some Member States such as Denmark and Germany have extensive experience with community energy, other countries, and in particular, the post-socialist states of Eastern Europe, have barely dealt with the concept and some of them currently have no known RECs [13]. It is important to point out that "community energy" is a phrase, synonymous to a range of terminologies, used to describe, "locally led, collectively owned, and managed energy projects" [14] (p. 2).…”

Agent Based Modelling of a Local Energy Market: A Study of the Economic Interactions between Autonomous PV Owners within a Micro-Grid

“…These communities, according to Caramizaru and Uihlein, are already more than 3000 in the EU [27]. Furthermore, the first section of the review describes the role of service providers or initiators such as those described in Capellán-Pérez et al, [28] or Lowitzsch et al [29]. It also contains a detailed classification of different types of energy communities drawn from categories found in Moroni et al [30], among others.…”