Energy communities are the missing piece of Europe’s transition puzzle

The role of the prosumer within the European energy transition is becoming more of a priority from all angles. And while this is being recognised by European policy – packages such as REPowerEU and the Green Deal for example provide a lot of momentum to advance energy communities and reap their potential benefits – more is certainly needed.

For according to Gonçalo Mendes, senior researcher at LUT University, Finland, experts estimate that by 2050, 83% of EU households could take active involvement in the energy system by utilising RES (Renewable Energy Sources) to spur decarbonisation and coordinating other actions – whether enrolment in virtual power plants (VPPs), buying into EVs, or making use of smart tech – to help support the grid.

This same research shows that approximately half of the EU population could be producing their own electricity via renewables by 2052, not only at home but also in services through energy communities.

The potential of energy communities

Mendes presented these findings during a session held for European Sustainable Energy Week; ‘Energy Communities to drive the energy transition: Solutions, technologies and citizens’. The session explored the concept of energy communities and prosumers within the energy transition and its potential to fill a missing piece of the EU’s complex energy puzzle.

 “It’s sad that we are wasting energy in a time of our life when so many people across communities are waiting on this very same energy,” so stated Maria João Benquerença, Cleanwatts director for energy communities.

What Benquerença was alluding to was the missed potential across the continent of truly capitalising on energy ownership and smart management within communities, especially during this time of crisis where ‘heat or eat’ is a frequently recited adage.

But within this context, there are projects exploring ways to empower communities and develop the concept of the prosumer to a point where they can become more active in the energy scene and secure more recognition from policymakers.

Two particular projects – both European-funded – that presented during the energy communities session for EUSEW were the GRETA project, presented by Mendes, and the IANOS project, presented by João Maciel, managing director at EDP NEW.

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GRETA & Energy communities as a concept

Coordinated by LUT University, project GRETA sees that action is required from both the policy and technology sides of the transition to capitalise on the energy potential Europe has already illustrated it has.

The project looks at the pressing need to decarbonise the continent and how prosumers are an essential, yet missing component of the energy transition.

Specifically, what’s needed are “socially-sensible instruments, built from the bottom-up,” stated Mendes.

“An explicit recognition of the social side of the transition is missing – the role of the prosumer. We know very little about energy citizenship drivers and barriers. How to enhance this is a mystery and it is unlikely that top down policies driven by technology policy and market rules alone, which is the current paradigm, will provide the edge to drive decarbonisation at the level that we want.”

GRETA thus aims to support understanding of energy citizenship and develop new ways to promote and enhance it across levels, including geographic, local and national.

“We want to use lessons learned from the project to support the design of better policies that are inclusive of these missing elements.”

GRETA has four fronts of ambition:

• Interactions and interplay

This includes modelling of individual and collective behavioural patterns. Understanding this is critical, according to Mendes, to producing energy citizenship.

• Community instruments

This includes the deployment of transition pathways and energy citizenship contracts: “Policies we co-design with communities in mind of their goals and desired outcomes of the transition for the community environment.”

• Data for decision support

Energy data can be modelled to inform and empower stakeholder action; data scientists work to enhance the information produced from communities, citizens and public authority for decision making.

“We can, for instance, improve the way communities are profiled against other types of communities so that they can compare their progress in a better way,” Mendes added.

• Data literacy for inclusion

This literacy, according to the project, is essential for a truly just transition, where an interactive interface approach ensures that no one is excluded or left behind on the path to net zero.

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Where the GRETA project focuses on developing the concept of energy communities through social instruments, IANOS explores the notion of energy communities within European islands and the interesting case study they present.

IANOS (IntegrAted SolutioNs for DecarbOnisation and Smartification of Islands) project focuses on seven domains – renewables, grids, distributed energy resources (DERs), green hydrogen, storage and flexibility, mobility and decarbonisation.

According to Maciel, the project sees the position of local energy communities intersecting across each of the seven domains, “which is why we think it’s [important] to develop projects on the modernisation of distributed energy resources…towards leveraging the concept of local energy communities.”

IANOS’ objectives are the advance the decarbonisation of Islands through optimising energy consumption and energy bills for communities while integrating more renewables into the system.

And although the project is still in its implementation phases, their findings are fascinating.

A significant portion of the European population lives on islands, where higher energy costs are a norm due to the exorbitant prices of importing fossil fuels. These islands thus, according to Maciel, provide a great test concept, where islands can be seen as “living labs for what will happen on continental systems” at a later stage in the energy transition.

And it is by addressing islands that one can explore pathways to coordinate more impactful action with far less resources.

IANOS explores these case studies by looking at two different sets of island community contexts:

• The Lighthouse cities, consisting of Ameland in the Netherlands and Terceira in Portugal
• The Fellow islands, consisting of Bora Bora in France, Lampedusa in Italy and Nysiros in Greece

Throughout these different situations, the different islands chosen for their different climates, socio-economic situations and stages of renewables, storage and end use application, IANOS has found so far that what’s critical for energy communities is that clarity be core to any project.

“People need to understand exactly what’s at stake and clarity is an issue. We understand technology, but we tend to overlook passing these messages thoroughly onto the community,” explained Maciel.

Whether through mock ups or taking time to explain things to the community, IANOS emphasized the importance of this not simply as a one-off notion, but rather a continuous effort to “keep the flame alive.”

And, whether energy and bills savings, intelligence, competition or gamification, what’s needed to get energy communities going is to have “something in it for the community.”

Maciel added how these islands can provide a very impactful case study on how to make a change for the energy transition, providing space for significant fossil fuel reduction and RES integration.

It is also hoped to provide inspiration for subsequent projects, where the findings can be replicated and expanded for communities across the continent.