Governing community energy: feed-in tariffs and the development of community wind energy schemes in the United Kingdom and Germany

By Colin Nolden. 2013

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper analyses the development of community energy in the UK by comparing it to Germany in relation to decentralisation, scales and ownership structures particularly of wind energy. Varying approaches to energy generation at the community scale provide interesting insights into the impact of policy innovation as well as the capacity of national energy frameworks to foster socially innovative engagement practices beyond the purely technological diffusion of innovations. By examining interactions between technological and social innovations with the help of a qualitative analysis, opportunities for potential generators not traditionally engaged in energy generation to tap into these innovation systems are analysed. This paper suggests that greater commitment to diversification beyond the implementation of policy measures such as the feed-in tariff is required to provide communities with the capacity to develop new generation practices in terms of scale and ownership. The UK in particular is struggling to protect these new generation practices which allow communities to derive benefits facilitated by specific energy policy measures according to their potential. It concludes by indicating areas where niche protection might need to be expanded if community energy is to play a greater role in the UK′s ambitious transition to a low-carbon economy.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2db4b003c3a8eeabda6fd0c4c880d772718ea47f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. A. Buzogány
2. Thomas Bauwens
3. C. Candelise
4. Stefan Ćetković

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Thomas Bauwens
2. A. Buzogány
3. Boris Gotchev
4. Lars Holstenkamp
5. Stefan Ćetković

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Thomas Bauwens
2. A. Buzogány
3. Stefan Ćetković

Citations in the corpus

• Financing the civic energy sector: How financial institutions affect ownership models in Germany and the United Kingdom (2016, unknown): “Research has tended to focus on community generation [2] [3] [4] or investigate group formation , policy suitability and barriers to entry [5] [6] [7] [8].”
• Statistical Evidence on the Role of Energy Cooperatives for the Energy Transition in European Countries (2018, background): “In 2014, Her Majesty’s Treasury announced that both the Enterprise Investment Scheme and the Seed tax relief would be removed from projects that qualify for FiT, RO or the Renewable Heat Incentive [7].”
• What drives the development of community energy in Europe? The case of wind power cooperatives (2016, background): “Various scholars argue that this system and its predecessor, the “Non Fossil Fuel Obligation”, are responsible for the lack of diversification in terms of scale and ownership structures [12, 13, 24].”
• Varieties of capitalism and clean energy transitions in the European Union: When renewable energy hits different economic logics (2016, background): “A number of obstacles for community-led renewable energy development still remain to be tackled, particularly the investment conditions, planning procedures and infrastructure (Nolden, 2013).”