Investigating whether the engagement of citizens in energy communities could lead to a rise in energy justice

Abstract

Energy Communities are initiatives ran by members of the same or different communities with the aim of producing, distributing and consuming cleaner energy. The potential of these initiatives, as identified from this clean energy production, to play a key role in the energy transition is assumed to be vital as recognized by the European Commission’s Clean Energy for All package and the provision of a legislative framework for their operation in European countries. In the light of this, European policy makers assume that promoting the engagement of more citizens in such initiatives will lead to a rise in energy justice and a fairer energy transition. However, several researches show that this assumption maybe flawed as the relation between the two is not explicitly verified. Through the acknowledgement of minority groups, this research aims to investigate whether an increased citizen engagement in energy communities could lead to a rise in energy justice. For this, the research is broken down into three key steps involving: 1) investigating what factors could affect the willingness of citizens to engage in energy communities by conducting a literature review and then evaluating potential influence of the identified factors for the city of The Hague as case study area, 2) investigating the distribution of the identified factors around areas with energy communities to find out whether there are any social groups favoured by the distribution of these factors around neighbourhoods with 24 energy communities. This is done by conducting spatial data analysis to investigate whether the engagements of any particular social groups or classes of people might be favoured by the spatial locations of energy communities in specific areas of The Hague 3) finally by conducting one on one interviews with 8 board members of energy communities in The Hague, the research seeks to investigate the relation between the identified factors potentially affecting citizens' desires to engage and the three tenets of energy justice. The results show that in the city of The Hague, although a majority of neighbourhoods in which energy communities are located are characterized by a high number of minority groups, a high majority of the energy communities interviewed (7 out of 8) acknowledge that minority groups are generally less involved. However for the classes of people engaging in such initiatives, a majority seeks to raise their powers and that of other community members in the decision making process. Hence, this allows to conclude that for the case study area, energy communities might only lead to a limited rise in Energy justice due to the partial or non-acknowledgement of minority groups.