In 2019, the EU set into motion dedicated legislation to expand renewable energy communities (RECs) where they already exist, and enable citizen energy in countries – mostly eastern and southern Europe – where there were none at all. The goals: to increase the use of renewable energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance energy security, and also empower citizens – to make them part of the Energiewende. Member states had five years to transpose these directives and all of them did, though to different degrees and with diverse results. Paul Hockenos gives an overview at the occasion of the European Energy Communities Forum currently organised in Kraków, Poland.

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In the five years since the EU’s issuance of directives to expand community energy across the bloc, thousands of new renewable energy communities (RECs) have formed and many of the established ones have expanded. There are no official numbers yet but high-end estimates hover at around 9,000 RECs with several million participants, depending on how one defines community energy. They range from a handful of parents putting solar panels on local school to legal cooperatives, the largest of which is Ecopower, based in Belgium, that has more than 11,000 members and generates about 100 GWh of green electricity a year.

The EU legislation gave member states five years not only to pass legislation that makes citizen energy projects possible in the first place but also to provide ’enabling frameworks’ to facilitate the development of RECs. In other words, to transpose the wording of the directive into law books so that RECs can happen and operate successfully. The vision was to make RECs an integral part of the larger transition to renewables and the decarbonisation of Europe’s economy and society.

The good news is that everywhere in the EU today there exist RECs. Even across Southeast Europe (SEE), there are now RECs speckling the Balkans and the hinterlands of the Danube. In every case, they are projects spearheaded by people who want to do something about high fossil-fuel energy prices, the dominance of state utilities, and for the environment, too.

Moreover, surveys show that interest in DIY clean energy is high everywhere in Europe. In one study polling Romanians and Bulgarians, 85 percent of the respondents indicated strong interest for starting local energy cooperatives.

The leaders in Northern Europe

The EU countries most flush with energy communities are the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany, says Viktor Bukovszki of the Budapest-based think tank ABUD Ltd. ‘Germany alone accounts for nearly half of all energy communities in the EU,’ he says. The EU directives may account for the modest growth (5 to 10%) in this region but perhaps even more importantly, the EU legislation stipulated that states enable new kinds of citizen energy, such as energy sharing between parties. Germany, for example, now allows Mieterstrom, a construct that enables tenants to access the electricity grid for the purpose of sharing renewable electricity with other consumers.

Another characteristic: where groups of citizens seize the initiative to produce clean energy themselves, on their own terms, they are almost always keen to expand their size and branch into other areas, such as community storage, efficiency, and e-mobility, among many others. A German study showed that in 2023 62 percent of energy communities were planning to expand their activities.

Catching up

The real boom, says Bukovszki, has been in those member states between Northern Europe and Central and Eastern Europe, the top achiever being Austria. Austria’s laws were finally updated in 2021 to enable community energy, and its proponents jumped on the opportunity, starting up 3,000 communities in the last four years.

The lion’s share of these start-up communities are photovoltaic systems, followed by small hydropower plants and wind turbines. The largest group of facilitators are neighbourhoods, but also some companies or municipalities. ‘One of the main reasons why people opt for such communities,’ says Johannes Kohlmaier, leader of a regional consultancy for energy communities, ‘is that they make themselves more independent of the electricity markets and the associated price fluctuations.’

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is on the map

CEE started from nothing – and is now no longer at Square One. The laws in most of these countries, however, are still a long way from ‘enabling’ energy communities. In many countries, the directives were just transposed verbatim – in order to meet the EU’s formal requirements – but without the necessary national laws to make it happen. But prosumer groups are working on it.

In EU country Bulgaria, for example, citizens in the 50,000-strong city of Gabrovo seized the initiative, aided by the municipality itself. A crowdfunding campaign financed a 100 kW solar installation perched atop a local dump. The campaign attracted around a hundred small investors – citizens from Gabrovo and other parts of Bulgaria, local businesses, and NGOs – whose investment was limited to €2,500 per member. Gabrovo’s local government was behind it from the start, and it received a hand from the EU.

Much like other cases I’ve examined, enthusiasm about the project was contagious: ’We expected to have to actively seek out different communication channels and persuade citizens,’ explains Todor Popov, a representative of Gabrovo municipality. ’However, the communication channels—and citizens—came to us. Once word of the initiative spread, national media reached out, and the local community was more engaged than we had anticipated.’

Croatia was very slow to get started but now RECs are sprouting across the country, thanks in large part to Green Energy Cooperative (ZEZ), which has been around for a decade but only managed to get a full-fledged cooperative set up recently. It is currently working with 17 expert organisations and initiatives to establish energy communities – or in other ways contribute to their development in Croatia. It helped the little city of Križevci launch two crowdfunding campaigns that helped finance the 200 kW ZEZ Sun solar power plant on the city’s market, which is now one of the largest in the region. Križevci has a larger project – a 5.2 MW power plant – in the works. Mislav Kirac, manager of ZEZ Sun, summed up the importance of the project: ‘All citizens in Croatia have the right to produce their own electricity, and energy communities are one way to realise that right.’

The Forum is at the core of establishing a network of local energy communities across Croatia that will provide its members with access to sustainable, renewable and affordable energy.

Where from here?

’The progress of RECs has largely been policy-driven,’ argues a European Climate Initiative report, ’relying on national policy tools such as guaranteed tariffs, grid connection priority, regional advisory centers, action plans, and net-metering. The results specifically indicate the strengths of engaging local actors such as municipalities, cooperatives, local businesses, local banks, non-profit organizations and intermediaries, to raise awareness, mobilize citizens, and access networks.’

The challenges often stem from limited national support and difficulties in implementation.

‘More courage is needed to establish energy communities as a pillar of the energy system and to signal to citizens that their participation and involvement in the energy transition is desired and necessary,’ explains economist Lars Holstenkamp from Leuphana University Lüneburg. Bureaucratic hurdles and complex framework conditions are currently limiting community involvement, he says.

The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union.

For more details about the specific challenges of renewable energy communities in CEE countries, see the new report ‘Energy Communities and the legacy of post-socialism’ by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Warsaw and CoopTech Hub.