Abstract

Local generation of renewable energy in energy communities has long been around, but has recently experienced an upswing. This upswing is partly due to the EU Clean Energy Package (CEP), where energy communities are introduced juridically as formal actors. Within this policy package, various values are attributed to local energy communities, particularly emphasising broadened citizen participation. Also in academic contexts, energy communities are assigned an important role for a just energy transition. Considering this increasing importance and policy prevalence, it is relevant to explore what types of energy communities exist and are emerging in light of the CEP, and which values these correspond with. We do so by exploring how Swedish solar energy communities are configured and what values they foreground, through the analytical lens of problematizations. Exploring how different configurations entail particular problematizations elucidates how certain values are constructed as relevant, possibly to the detriment of other possible values, thus deepening our understanding of solar energy communities' potential contribution to a just energy transition. We discern a pattern in that particular values related to energy system optimisation are foregrounded, rather than other values such as democratisation, indicating the existence of a broader hegemony that shapes configurations of Swedish solar energy communities.

Keywords

Energy communities; Problematization; Configurations; Values; Democratisation

Published in

Energy Research and Social Science
2023, Volume: 102, article number: 103200
Publisher: ELSEVIER

SLU Authors

• Wangel, Josefin

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG7 Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all


UKÄ Subject classification

Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Energy Systems


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103200

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/123809