Communities dealing with renewable energy

FSR online debate

Communities dealing with renewable energy.

What’s their future in Europe?

Watch the recording:

Energy communities are spreading across Europe and beyond, gaining a growing role in the transition towards a decarbonised and more decentralised energy system. Citizens, possibly supported by local authorities and companies, are taking the initiative, investing collectively in generation assets or collectively purchasing electricity from renewable energy resources.

With the adoption of the Clean Energy Package, the EU has finally got a legal framework formally recognising the possibility for citizens to act together in the field of energy. Nonetheless, it is not yet clear how the future of community energy will look like in Europe over the next decade. Accurate and comparable statistics are limited and only a few studies that estimate the quantitative uptake of energy communities have been conducted so far.

This online debate is going to address the issue by investigating, on the one hand, what energy communities do and offer to citizens and, on the other hand, how the EU and its member states treat energy communities. By combining these two elements, it should then be possible to generate some educated guess or reasonable scenario over the development of community energy in the coming years.

Moderator:

Nicolò Rossetto (FSR)

Speakers:

• Jan Steinkohl (European Commission – DG Ener)
• Yvonne Finger (BNetzA)
• Albert Banal (Som Energia)
• Patrick Devine-Wright (University of Exeter)

During the online debate, experts from academia, public institutions and the field of practice will provide their view and will answer to the questions of the audience during a Q&A session.

Acknowledgments:

this online debate is part of the FRESCO project, which is generously supported by Fondation Tuck.