Energy Communities

This volume addresses renewable energy communities, and in particular renewable energy cooperatives (REScoops), in the context of the revised EU Renewables Directive. It provides a comprehensive account of the history and development of the renewable energy community movement in over six different countries of continental Europe. It addresses their visions, strategy, organisation, agency, and more particularly the challenges they encounter. This is of particular importance to gain more understanding into how renewable energy communities fare in domestic energy markets where they are confronted with regime institutions, structures and incumbents’ agency that tend to favour maintaining of the status quo while blocking attempts to empower and institutionalise renewable energy communities as market entrants having a disruptive, radical green and localist agenda. This volume will be an invaluable reference for academics and practitioners with an interest in social innovation in sustainable transitions, the role of community energy in energy markets, their agency, as well as an outlook to the impact that the EU Renewables Directive may have to change national legislation and policy frameworks to create a level playing field that is essentially more fair and beneficial to renewable energy communities.

Energy Communities explores core potential systemic benefits and costs in engaging consumers into communities, particularly relating to energy transition. The book evaluates the conditions under which energy communities might be regarded as customer-centered, market-driven and welfare-enhancing. The book also reviews the issue of prevalence and sustainability of energy communities and whether these features are likely to change as opportunities for distributed energy grow. Sections cover the identification of welfare considerations for citizens and for society on a local and national level, and from social, economic and ecological perspectives, while also considering different community designs and evolving business models. Defines and conceptualizes the energy community for the current generation of researchers and practitioners facing the energy transition Explores the main benefits and challenges in forming energy communities and to what extent they are welfare-enhancing Examines under what terms, conditions, regulations or policies energy communities can be beneficially and successfully organized and why Reviews the combination of business models and forms of organization which are conducive to economic feasibility and the commercial success of energy communities

This book draws on social science analysis to understand the ongoing dynamics within and surrounding local energy communities in reliably electrified countries: Belgium, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It offers a comprehensive overview of recent results and thus outlines a diversity of drivers and levers for scaling up energy communities or, at least, local energy sharing. Analysing the main types of energy communities such as collective self-consumption, citizen cooperatives and peer-to-peer digital platforms, the book does not only raise new questions for social scientists, but also offers a comprehensive overview for all those contributing to the circular economy and the decentralization of energy production in inhabited areas where energy consumption is concentrated. This book provides input for the ongoing debates in many European countries implementing the national law on the European directives for energy communities. Furthermore, without evading the antagonism between cooperative and market approaches, or the contradictions between different issues, the book outlines the innovative decision-making tools that can facilitate the development of local energy production and sharing systems. As well as being of interest to postgraduates and researchers in the field of energy studies, this book will be vital to energy professionals looking to support local energy communities’ decision-making and design, who wish to consider sociological, organizational and territorial dimensions.

This book presents trading in local energy markets and communities. It covers electrical, business, economics, telecommunication, information technology (IT), environment, building, industrial, and computer science and examines the intersections of these areas with these markets and communities. Additionally, it delivers an vision for local trading and communities in smart cities. Since it also lays out concepts, structures, and technologies in a variety of applications intertwined with future smart cities, readers running businesses of all types will find material of use in the book. Manufacturing firms, electric generation, transmission and distribution utilities, hardware and software computer companies, automation and control manufacturing firms, and other industries will be able to use this book to enhance their energy operations, improve their comfort and privacy, as well as to increase the benefit from the energy system. This book is also used as a textbook for graduate level courses.

This book presents a methodology for the design, construction, monitoring, optimization, and post-occupancy evaluation of net-zero and positive-energy communities based on the experiences gained in the EU Horizon 2020 ZERO-PLUS project. It describes the steps, tools, and methods developed during the project, providing practical information for the energy and construction sector that will be of interest to students, engineers, architects, developers, and professionals working around high performance architecture and sustainable communities. Through the ZERO-PLUS project, a consortium of 32 partners from eight countries, including academic institutions, technology providers, architects, and construction companies, designed four communities covering completely different geo-climatic regions, construction practices, and cultural backgrounds in Cyprus, Italy, France, and the UK. The communities were designed, optimized, constructed, monitored, handed over to tenants, post-occupancy evaluated, and troubleshooted through a system of continuous collaboration and data acquisition. This book presents these case studies and shows how the project targets of reducing electricity consumption below 20 kWh/m2/y, increasing electricity production from Renewable Energy Systems to over 50 kWh/m2/y, and at cheaper costs when compared to current zero-energy buildings were reached and surpassed. These cases demonstrate that a holistic and interactive approach to design and construction can bring communities a high standard of sustainability. The key features of the book include: • Practical guidance drawn from the interdisciplinary, international, and remote cooperation between experts from academia and industry across the construction sector. • A survey of the state-of-the-art on net-zero and positive-energy communities, including the experience and the lessons learned from previous projects and from the ZERO-PLUS project. • Descriptions of novel emerging renewable energy technologies, integrated into real case study communities to achieve the energy generation target of the communities. • A comprehensive set of approaches, tools, guidelines, best practices, challenges, and lessons learned from the five-year ZERO-PLUS project and the completion of four residential case studies to inform the reader of how to achieve affordable net-zero energy communities. • Four typologies of residential communities located in different climatic conditions are presented, touching on the critical aspects of the design, construction, monitoring, and occupancy phase • A discussion of future trends for developing communities that are more liveable, accessible, and sustainable and which can comply with new energy policies in a way that is affordable for the owners and residents.

This Handbook examines the regulatory, social, financial, and technological issues pertaining to energy communities in smart cities. Evidencing the emergence of new imperatives at the intersection of sustainability, resilience, innovation, and legal issues, energy communities embody the thrust of the user-centred digital transformation our societies are subjected to today. By bridging the energy communities debate with smart cities research, this Handbook positions itself at the heart of the conversation on energy sustainability, climate action, and “just transition”. Drawing on contributions from across the globe, this book offers both a birds-eye and a detailed inter- and multidisciplinary insight into the emergence of energy communities and their evolution in the smart city context. Technological and regulatory aspects of this transition are explored from a variety of conceptual and empirical perspectives. Case studies evidencing developments in the Global South and the Global North embellish the conversation. Questions of climate change, energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, emissions’ reduction, and corresponding policy frameworks are discussed. Dedicated to all those interested in climate action, energy transition, sustainable development, and smart cities, this Handbook will be of interest to policymakers, lawyers, energy and urban experts, researchers, and students.

This book addresses the main challenges in implementing the concepts that aim to replace the regular fossil-fuels based energy pattern with the novel energy pattern relying on renewable energy. As the built environment is one major energy consumer, well known and exploited by each community member, the challenges addressing the built environment has to be solved with the consistent contribution of the community inhabitants and its administration. The transition phase, which already is under implementation, is represented by the Nearly Zero Energy Communities (nZEC). From the research topics towards the large scale implementation, the nZEC concept is analyzed in this book, starting with the specific issues of the sustainable built environment, beyond the Nearly Zero Energy Buildings towards a more integrated view on the community (Chapter1) and followed by various implementation concepts for renewable heating & cooling (Chapter 2), for renewable electrical energy production at community level (Chapter 3) and for sustainable water use and reuse (Chapter 4). As the topic is still new, specific instruments supporting education and training (Chapter 5) are needed, aiming to provide the knowledge that can drive the communities in the near future and is expected to increase the acceptance towards renewable energy implemented at community level. The sub-chapters of this book are the proceedings of the 5th edition of the Conference for Sustainable Energy, during 19-21 October 2017, organized by the R&D Centre Renewable Energy Systems and Recycling, in the R&D Institute of the Transilvania University of Brasov. This event was organized under the patronage of the International Federation for the Science of Machines and Mechanisms (IFToMM) - the Technical Committee Sustainable Energy Systems, of the European Sustainable Energy Alliance (ESEIA) and of the Romanian Academy of Technical Sciences.

The main aim of this book is to provide a state of the art of the Levelized Cost of Energy calculation for energy communities from both a theoretical, defining a systematic analysis approach, and a practical point of view, providing results for three representative real case studies. The book is structured in four clear chapters which cover everything from the fundamentals of power system configuration and the LCOE concept, to the definition of the aggregated system LCOE and its impact on electricity markets and energy policies. It presents case studies, within multiple examples for energy generation and storage, making it a brief but well-rounded review. The book will be useful for researchers and academics in energy economics, power systems and energy policies, for energy policy makers and students.