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Energy Communities

Customer-Centered, Market-Driven, Welfare-Enhancing?

  • 1st Edition - July 1, 2022
  • Latest edition
  • Editors: Sabine Loebbe, Fereidoon Sioshansi, David Robinson
  • Language: English

Energy Communities explores core potential systemic benefits and costs in engaging consumers into communities, particularly relating to energy transition. The book evaluates the co… Read more

Description

Energy Communities explores core potential systemic benefits and costs in engaging consumers into communities, particularly relating to energy transition. The book evaluates the conditions under which energy communities might be regarded as customer-centered, market-driven and welfare-enhancing. The book also reviews the issue of prevalence and sustainability of energy communities and whether these features are likely to change as opportunities for distributed energy grow. Sections cover the identification of welfare considerations for citizens and for society on a local and national level, and from social, economic and ecological perspectives, while also considering different community designs and evolving business models.

Key features

  • Defines and conceptualizes the energy community for the current generation of researchers and practitioners facing the energy transition
  • Explores the main benefits and challenges in forming energy communities and to what extent they are welfare-enhancing
  • Examines under what terms, conditions, regulations or policies energy communities can be beneficially and successfully organized and why
  • Reviews the combination of business models and forms of organization which are conducive to economic feasibility and the commercial success of energy communities

Readership

Early career researchers, policymakers and regulators investigating topics around energy communities, energy economics, consumer and prosumer behavior, and the energy transition.

Table of contents

Part 1: The Concept of Energy Communities and Their Regulatory Framework

1. A taxonomy of energy communities in liberalized energy systems

2. The EU policy framework for energy communities

3. Energy communities: A US regulatory perspective

4. Developing a legal framework for energy communities beyond energy law

5. Alignment of energy community incentives with electricity system benefits in Spain

6. The “virtual” model for collective self-consumption in Italy

7. Energy Communities: A North American Perspective

8. Energy Communities: Challenges for Regulators and Policymakers

Part 2: The Appeal of Energy Communities to Customers and Citizens

9. What motivates private households to participate in energy communities? A literature review and German case study

10. Community energy initiatives as a space for emerging new imaginaries?

11. The construction of a citizen-centered ecosystem for renewable energies in France

12. Energy communities’ social role in a just energy transition

Part 3: Enabling Technologies, Community Design, and Business Models

13. The path to energy communities via local energy management and digital customer care

14. Governing energy communities: The role of actors and expertise in business model innovation

15. Grid-friendly clean energy communities and induced intra-community cash flows through peer-to-peer trading

16. Italian Energy Communities from a DSO’s Perspective

17. Community energy design models in Brazil: From niches to mainstream

18. Institutional and policy context of energy communities in France and Italy: How to increase the welfare-enhancing capacity of the sector

19. The digitalization of peer-to-peer electricity trading in energy communities

Part 4: Case Studies and Implementation

20. Enabling Business Models and Grid Stability: Case Studies from Germany

21. Energy communities in Europe: A review of the Danish and German experiences

22. Platform-based energy communities in Germany and their benefits and challenges

23. A community-based biomethane heat network:Case study from Trier

24. Establishing Energy Communities in Post-Communist States:The Case of Bulgaria

25. Sustainable island energy systems: A case study of Tilos island, Greece

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: July 1, 2022
  • Language: English

About the editors

SL

Sabine Loebbe

Sabine Löbbe is a professor for energy economics and business administration in energy markets in the Reutlingen Energy Center for Distributed Energy Systems and Energy Efficiency at Reutlingen University, Germany. She is responsible for Sustainability in the President’s Office at the University. Her consulting company advises utilities on strategy, business and organizational development. Prior to her current position, she was Director for Strategy and Business Development at the municipal utility swb AG Bremen. She also worked at Arthur D. Little Inc. in the Energy Practice and in the regional utility VSE AG. She wrote her doctoral dissertation about marketing strategies for utilities at Saarbrücken University. In her research and teaching, she focuses on the transition of organisations towards climate neutrality, business model development based on customer preferences regarding distributed energy, as well as organisational issues for bridging the energy efficiency gap.
Affiliations and expertise
Professor for Energy Economics and Business Administration, Reutlingen Energy Center, Reutlingen, Germany

FS

Fereidoon Sioshansi

Dr. Fereidoon Sioshansi is President of Menlo Energy Economics, a consulting firm based in San Francisco with over 35 years of experience in the electric power sector working in analysis of energy markets, specializing in the policy, regulatory, technical and environmental aspects of the electric power sector in the US and internationally. His research and professional interests are concentrated in demand and price forecasting, electricity market design, competitive pricing & bidding, integrated resource planning, energy conservation and energy efficiency, economics of global climate change, sustainability, energy security, renewable energy technologies, and comparative performance of competitive electricity markets. Dr. Sioshansi advises major utility clients and government policy makers domestically and internationally on electricity market reform, restructuring and privatization of the electric power sector. He has published numerous reports, books, book chapters and papers in peer-reviewed journals on a wide range of subjects. His professional background includes working at Southern California Edison Co. (SCE), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), NERA, and Global Energy Decisions. He is the editor and publisher of EEnergy Informer, a monthly newsletter with international circulation. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of The Electricity Journal where he is regularly featured in the “Electricity Currents” section. Dr. Sioshansi also serves on the editorial board of Utilities Policy and is a frequent contributor to Energy Policy. Since 2006, He has edited 12 books on related topics with Elsevier.
Affiliations and expertise
President, Menlo Energy Economics, San Francisco, CA, USA

DR

David Robinson

David Robinson is a consulting economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. He is an academic adviser to The Brattle Group of Economic and Financial Consultants and was previously a director of NERA, where he was the co-chair of European Operations and one of the Directors of the Global Energy and Telecom Practices. He also worked at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford on the vertical disintegration of the international petroleum industry.
Affiliations and expertise
Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Madrid, Spain

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