Can Energy Communities Fund the Energy Transition?

Thank you Matt for you comment. You are right, the EU already identified consumers (or should I say citizen/energy communities) as a key funding sources. We expect to see differences between European countries in how they implement this concept. Like in North America, there are significant differences between different regions across the European continent and these regional factors will strongly influence the innovations that get traction with consumers and regulators in different countries.  We’ll be closely tracking what it will mean in terms of distributional impact, governance, and new business models in Europe.

I get your point but no I don’t see it really being driven by a desire to pass the buck to the little guy, but rather a desire from the little guy such as energy communities wanting to accelerate the energy transition by taking an active role in it. The energy transition is leading to a much more complex and distributed energy system, and local assets often on the customer side of the meter will play a much more important role in the future than they have in the past.  Many of these assets will be owned by end consumers, or at least will be within their homes or commercial buildings.  So the ‘little guy’ is inevitably going to be a much more involved participant in the future than in the past.  In parallel to this, increasing connectivity and digitalisation are bringing down barriers and enabling the ‘little guy’ to be play an active role, one that potentially he/she can even make a return on.  And now we see post-COVID economy recovery plans favour projects that support local investment, employment and resilience. So it’s a mix of both push and pull factors.  A challenge for the ‘big’ energy players is working out how they can play a role that gives them the scalable opportunities they are always after. Do they need to own new physical infrastructure? Which assets? Or do they just need the right partners to access assets? Should they just become local energy system managers, facilitators or aggregators? Governments and local regulatory frameworks will strongly influence the role they choose to play.