Trading in Local Energy Markets and Energy Communities by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031214028
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

2 Related Research

Energy community, to which manifold characteristics and functions are attributed, is a relatively new entity in the energy sector. Energy (sustainable/low-carbon/clean-energy) communities vary in structure, size and composition, responsible stakeholder(s), purpose, and features. Members of the energy community can be households, prosumers (i.e., individuals who consume and produce energy), businesses, and institutions. Depending on their characteristics, energy communities have diverse consequences and impacts on people, places, and energy the sector (Soeiro and Ferreira Dias 2020a). The common factor is the goal to decarbonize the energy system and increase the use of renewable energy (Summeren et al. 2020).

Multiple conceptualizations have been presented on energy community activities. In the EU, the Renewable Energy Directive (European Union 2018) defines ‘energy community’ as a legal entity that “is based on voluntary and open participation and is effectively controlled by members or shareholders that are natural persons, local authorities, including municipalities, or small enterprises; has for its primary purpose to provide environmental, economic or social community benefits to its members or shareholders or to the local areas where it operates rather than to generate financial profits; and may engage in generation, including from renewable sources, distribution, supply, consumption, aggregation, energy storage, energy efficiency services or charging services for electric vehicles or provide other energy services to its members or shareholders” (Roberts et al. 2019). Two types of energy community are further defined: ‘Renewable energy community’ and ‘Citizen energy community’ (Roberts et al. 2019). Citizen energy communities (CEC) “may engage [people or organizations] in generation, including from renewable sources, distribution, supply, consumption, aggregation, energy storage, energy efficiency services or charging services for electric vehicles or provide other energy services to its members or shareholders” (Roberts et al. 2019). Renewable energy community (REC) is a special instance of CEC, referring to an entity where members are located in the proximity of renewable energy projects controlled or owned by the community (Hunkin and Krell 2018). REC may produce, consume, store and sell renewable energy, to share within the community and access all suitable markets (Roberts et al. 2019). Small and geographically local community energy initiatives produce or invest in the production of renewable energy primarily to cover their own energy needs (Dóci et al. 2015), with an emphasis on the social and shared identity aspect of the energy community, and provide the local community a form of co-operation and collaboration to reduce their energy carbon footprint (Heiskanen et al. 2010). Other conceptualizations of energy community activities include ‘Prosumer community group’, referring to a community of prosumers generating and sharing energy (Espe et al. 2018; Rathnayaka et al. 2014), and ‘local energy initiative’ (LEI) (Ghorbani et al. 2020).

Energy communities require and inspire new business models and technology applications in energy markets (Reis et al. 2021). The energy community may be a (local) RE production and sharing network, or a two- or multi-sided platform that matches two or more user groups (Abdelkafi et al. 2019; Eisenmann et al. 2006; Hagiu 2013). The platform may offer user groups diverse

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