Exploring the Transition Potential of Renewable Energy Communities

By G. Dóci, Eleftheria Vasileiadou, Arthur C. Petersen. 2015

257 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although in the last decades a transition toward a sustainable energy system with renewables has been advocated by many, it is still uncertain where the support and required investments for renewables can come from. In this article we introduce and analyze a special type of investor group: renewable energy communities, which are grassroots initiatives that invest in 'clean energy' in order to meet consumption needs and environmental goals and thereby – even unwittingly – conduce to the spread of renewables. The aim of the present study is to explore the potential of renewable energy communities, as social niches, to contribute to transitions in the energy system. To do so, we propose three indicators for measuring the transition potential of social niches, based on proxies for technological innovations derived from the literature. In addition, we reinterpret the notion of niches and the way transition occurs by arguing that niches are complex systems in which both technological and social innovations develop simultaneously and that during transition entire niches link up with the regime. Furthermore, we make a distinction between internally and externally oriented niches based on their orientation and application focus. Our results show that renewable energy communities in the Netherlands are internally oriented social niches that have the potential for upscaling and contribute to sustainability transitions. We use a comparative case study analysis complemented by a systematic literature and documentary review to show that these communities are already changing the Dutch energy system, by connecting to regime actors. Their further advancement depends on strengthening their links to established actors, but also on providing a favorable regulatory framework.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d466f9a08ae88c8697f886c9d144b20fd245aeb2

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In Global and Planetary Change

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Renewable Energy Cooperatives as an instrument towards the energy transition in Spain (2018, methodology): “Even though the MLP approach was initially proposed for the assessment of technological transitions, it has also been applied to such sociotechnical transitions as the so-called “green”, “sustainable” or “low-carbon transitions” (Doci et al., 2015; Geels, 2014, 2010, 2002; Smith et al., 2005).”
Three is a crowd? Exploring the potential of crowdfunding for renewable energy in the Netherlands (2016, methodology): “In addition, in a recent study of renewable energy communities as social innovations, the heterogeneity of the niches was introduced as an additional proxy for stabilisation of the niche (Doci et al., 2015).”
Taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy: A review and research agenda (2018, background): “energy, they have also endorsed a view that small-s c le and Feed-In-Tariff supported RE generation unduly influences consumer energy costs [32,33].”