Energy communities are already a cry among part of the citizens, and increasingly a reason for consensus between parties of different colors. But it is worth explaining what public purpose they fulfill, and the different paths that are being implemented. Despite the absence of a public vision for energy communities in some places, paths are opening up that guide these initiatives to strengthen small businesses, enrich sociability in neighborhoods or reduce energy poverty, among others.
From Europe, the need to “empower citizens” is reiterated, through energy communities where they can learn about energy and climate change, have control over their production and consumption, and be another interlocutor in the energy system. However, we need a deep reflection on how to empower the state, which is important for an increasingly atomized citizenry, to a certain extent confused with the technocratic discourses of climate change, and which also has a limited capacity to invest in production infrastructure. energy.
Rethinking the role of the public is crucial for the energy transition to be fair and ecological, including projects capable of bringing together broad participation and responding to the needs of a diverse and complex population. Otherwise, the lack of strategic vision from public institutions will lead to reproducing the logic and relationships of the energy oligopoly, with some anecdotal energy community.
Public energy policies are today a poorly defined and tense field. Local governments still have room for intervention to guarantee an essential service in a universal, affordable and environmentally sustainable way, thereby contributing to renewing the social pact and the Welfare State. Energy communities propose the incorporation of new actors in the energy system, asking questions about the supply of renewable energy, and the sociocultural, political and economic changes in which they act.
In this sense it emerged CERES (Energy Communities facing the Ecological and Social Challenge) in 2020, a learning community between local and regional authorities, who met to share doubts and fears, ideas and learning, and even the incipient results of some energy community pilot project. Today, it is the only Community Transition Office (OTC) at the state level, financed by the Institute for Energy Diversification and Savings (IDAE), which accompanies municipalities and public-community initiatives in the implementation of energy communities in all its diversity.
CERES has already supported different models of energy communities. One of the most notable differences in these pilots has to do with the groups that are sought to be involved. Energy communities can be created with different local actors such as households, public authorities, associations, small businesses, private companies and even industrial estates. The most relevant energy community policies are linked to a diagnosis of local problems, such as the decline of small businesses or the industrial fabric or the failures of the social bonus for households in a situation of energy vulnerability.
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Furthermore, different degrees of municipal involvement emerge. The largest policies propose that the City Council be part of the energy community (as another partner), making economic resources and technical equipment available, and also deploy complementary policies on energy poverty, social services, taxation or education. This is the case of Prat energy in Catalonia, where the City Council has created a public company and transferred shares to an association of consumers and another of companies in the municipality.
Participatory processes
In other initiatives, the role of the public is reduced to granting the use of a municipal roof or a municipally owned photovoltaic plant. This is the case of AppleEnergywhere the participatory process led by the City Council, with neighbors and the educational community around the town’s public school, was also fundamental.
Social and cultural innovation is also necessary. The question that hovers over the first pilots of energy communities has to do with how to ensure that it is not just adult men with a high level of education who lead these projects. That new groups have power in the energy system implies a profound change, in the way we talk about energy, for example. We need new codes, stories, concepts, beyond the technical dimension of energy, to be able to involve the Social Services, Equality, Education, Economy or Youth areas of City Councils, and also groups of different social classes.
For this reason, cases in which a public innovation process is first proposed to facilitate the learning of the administration itself, which may be able to understand the challenges and propose solutions, are especially interesting. Collaboration between departments, the political vision, and having time to think and build a public purpose is essential for energy communities to be a strategic, and not anecdotal, tool to address some problems of the energy and social crisis that we are experiencing.
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