sdg 7 | sustainable and non-polluting energy
These projects allow the amount to be reduced by 30% by “not depending on market fluctuations”
There are almost 2,000 energy community projects in Germany, about 700 in Denmark, half a thousand in the Netherlands, more than 400 in the UK. And Spain? It does not reach half a hundred. “We must bear in mind that in Spain we do not have a very broad associative culture,” responds Luis García Benedicto, head of the Department of Renewable Energies and the Electricity Market of the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE). “That makes our development slower, although there are certain more developed Spanish regions,” he adds.
A novel concept that “seeks to put the consumer at the center,” Garcia details. With only two years in the Spanish legal system, it is included in Royal Decree-Law 23/2020, of June 23, 2020, the energy communities are defined as “legal entities based on open and voluntary participation, autonomous and effectively controlled by partners or members that are located in the vicinity of the renewable energy projects that are owned by said legal entities and that they have developed, whose partners or members are natural persons, SMEs or local authorities, including municipalities, ”says the text normative.
“There is a very typical confusion that is collective and shared self-consumption and energy communities,” says García Benedicto. “These are terms that are by no means synonymous,” adds Joaquín Mas, CEO of Enercoop, promoter of the first energy community in Spain.
In the first case, a group of citizens manages to generate energy through, for example, photovoltaic installations and a shared consumption is made. “But it is not an energy community,” García clarifies. In this case, these are legal entities made up of citizens, SMEs or local entities that “what they are going to do is promote different types of energy projects,” explains Luis García Benedicto.
“Currently, initiatives that are not such and that do not meet the established requirements are being classified as such, either because of their governance or because they are oriented, in a veiled way, to a partially lucrative objective,” Mas denounces. “From our experience, creating an energy community is much more than a collective self-consumption facility. It is about introducing the energy variable into the local culture and developing a long-term project that becomes part of the DNA of its members », he warns.
Crevillent, pioneer
With the energy transition in the spotlight and with the electricity bill getting fatter, energy communities are a solution to “provide environmental, economic or social benefits to their partners or members or to the local areas where they operate”, explains the IDAE in their website.
Under this premise, in 2019 COMPTEM (Community for the Municipal Energy Transition) was activated, a project of the Enercoop Group in collaboration with Crevillente (Alicante), with the Generalitat Valenciana and with the IDAE. “The project is based on three fundamental pillars: development of an energy production model under the collective cellular self-consumption modality “As A Service”, a digital tool for energy dissemination and culturalization aimed at citizens and, finally, a public system of energy information through digital panels located in strategic outdoor spaces in the municipality”, explains Mas.
With nearly 30,000 inhabitants, this town in Alicante is already the kilometer zero of the Spanish energy communities. “In 2020, the implementation of the first pilot cell for collective self-consumption based on photovoltaic solar energy located in the Crevillentine district of El Realengo was completed,” says the general director of Enercoop. “Our goal, by 2030, is to have up to 22 fully operational cells with the capacity to meet 50% of the municipality’s energy needs,” he adds.
“Energy communities help society to be less sensitive to fluctuations in the wholesale energy market”
Joaquin More
CEO of Enercoop
For two years now, the nearly 300 residents of Realengo have already seen the first benefits of this community association in their electricity bills. “Users have access from day one, and without any personal financial investment, to savings of up to 30% on their electricity bill,” says Mas. “Energy communities help society to be less sensitive to fluctuations in the wholesale energy market.”
However, these projects are also a powerful local economic driver. “We are all clear about the environmental benefits of these projects,” says Luis García Benedicto, head of the Department of Renewable Energies and the Electricity Market of the IDAE. “But there are also social and economic benefits, because they help generate local employment and citizen participation is promoted.”