Community Energy Enterprises in the Distributed Energy Geography A Review of Issues and Potential Approaches

Abstract

The debate on distributed energy systems is evolving in a way that enlarge the domain of traditional energy policy, especially regarding urban and regional development priorities and community engagement aspects. The present article discusses on the possibility to adopt Community Energy Enterprises as a specific organisational model that may represent a crucial and not yet explored tool to enhance the diffusion of a distributed energy geography, promoting new approaches for community-based energy systems. The crucial issue here is that in the discussion of the current energy system we may refer not only to production units, but also to ownership, decision-making and local responsibility as regards new forms of provision, infrastructures and organizations. With these objectives the paper discusses in a multi-scalar perspective the role of these organizations may innovate the governance of the current energy market, as part of bottom-up based socio-material transition in the energy market: mobilising specific territorial factors, institutions and approaches in users and citizens’ engagement.