A shift in Europe towards local-led renewable energy provision as part of the energy transition is leading to emerging local energy communities (LECs) at the municipal level, comprising stakeholders ranging from households to local government. However, LECs’ ultimate success will depend on how well they are able to scale up efforts, be it through growth or replication elsewhere. Now, Bernd Bonfert from Aarhus University presents insights on scaling up community-led energy innovation, with a particular focus on associated legislative, governance and stakeholder participation challenges and opportunities.
To take stock of what we know so far, Bonfert undertook a comparative assessment grounded in document analysis, participant observation and seventeen semi-structured interviews with involved actors in LECs in four pilot cities. The four case studies were Amersfoort (Netherlands), Malmö (Sweden), Mechelen (Belgium) and West Suffolk (United Kingdom), all of which were trialling energy innovation projects with the intention of scaling up efforts. Bonfert concludes that while EU legislation has played an important role in facilitating LECs to date, national-level policy changes are needed to incentivize innovation at the local level in areas such as energy storage, grid balancing and peer-to-peer energy trading and to ensure this growth in democratic and socially inclusive ways. The results highlight important constraints that governments may need to contend with in the future if they are to outsource energy innovation action to LECs.
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