IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i11p3230-d238961.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Collective Energy Practices: A Practice-Based Approach to Civic Energy Communities and the Energy System

Author

Listed:
  • Nick Verkade

    (School of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, Room ATL 8.406, P O Box 513, 1600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands)

  • Johanna Höffken

    (School of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, Room ATL 8.406, P O Box 513, 1600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands)

Abstract

Civic energy communities (CECs) have emerged throughout Europe in recent years, developing a range of activities to promote, generate, and manage renewable energy within the community. Building on theories of Social Practice, we develop the notion of Collective Energy Practice to account for the activity of CECs. This expands the practice-based understanding of energy, which thus far has mostly focused on energy practices of the home. Additionally, we build on earlier practice-based thinking to come to our understanding of a ‘system of energy practices’. This view places the collective energy practices of CECs in a broader mesh of sites of practice, including policymaking, commercial activity, and grid management. Taking account of the enabling and/or restricting the influence of this broad system of energy practices is crucial in understanding the development of CECs’ practices. We accomplish this through the qualitative analysis of our long-term empirical research of five Dutch CEC sites, but also draw on our earlier fieldwork on smart grid projects in the Netherlands.

Suggested Citation

  • Nick Verkade & Johanna Höffken, 2019. "Collective Energy Practices: A Practice-Based Approach to Civic Energy Communities and the Energy System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-15, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:11:p:3230-:d:238961
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3230/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3230/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hirsch, Adam & Parag, Yael & Guerrero, Josep, 2018. "Microgrids: A review of technologies, key drivers, and outstanding issues," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 402-411.
    2. Koirala, Binod Prasad & van Oost, Ellen & van der Windt, Henny, 2018. "Community energy storage: A responsible innovation towards a sustainable energy system?," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C), pages 570-585.
    3. Hargreaves, Tom & Nye, Michael & Burgess, Jacquelin, 2010. "Making energy visible: A qualitative field study of how householders interact with feedback from smart energy monitors," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 6111-6119, October.
    4. Henk-Jan Kooij & Arnoud Lagendijk & Marieke Oteman, 2018. "Who Beats the Dutch Tax Department? Tracing 20 Years of Niche–Regime Interactions on Collective Solar PV Production in The Netherlands," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-16, August.
    5. Antonia Proka & Matthijs Hisschemöller & Derk Loorbach, 2018. "Transition without Conflict? Renewable Energy Initiatives in the Dutch Energy Transition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-19, May.
    6. Elizabeth Shove, 2010. "Beyond the ABC: Climate Change Policy and Theories of Social Change," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(6), pages 1273-1285, June.
    7. Thomas Hoppe & Antonia Graf & Beau Warbroek & Imke Lammers & Isabella Lepping, 2015. "Local Governments Supporting Local Energy Initiatives: Lessons from the Best Practices of Saerbeck (Germany) and Lochem (The Netherlands)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-32, February.
    8. Watson, Matt, 2012. "How theories of practice can inform transition to a decarbonised transport system," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 488-496.
    9. Esther C. Van der Waal & Henny J. Van der Windt & Ellen C. J. Van Oost, 2018. "How Local Energy Initiatives Develop Technological Innovations: Growing an Actor Network," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-19, December.
    10. Marieke Oteman & Henk-Jan Kooij & Mark A. Wiering, 2017. "Pioneering Renewable Energy in an Economic Energy Policy System: The History and Development of Dutch Grassroots Initiatives," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-21, April.
    11. Hicks, Jarra & Ison, Nicola, 2018. "An exploration of the boundaries of ‘community’ in community renewable energy projects: Navigating between motivations and context," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 523-534.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Troy Malatesta & Gregory M. Morrison & Jessica K. Breadsell & Christine Eon, 2023. "A Systematic Literature Review of the Interplay between Renewable Energy Systems and Occupant Practices," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-27, June.
    2. Elena Tarpani & Cristina Piselli & Claudia Fabiani & Ilaria Pigliautile & Eelke J. Kingma & Benedetta Pioppi & Anna Laura Pisello, 2022. "Energy Communities Implementation in the European Union: Case Studies from Pioneer and Laggard Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-17, October.
    3. Moritz Ehrtmann & Lars Holstenkamp & Timon Becker, 2021. "Regional Electricity Models for Community Energy in Germany: The Role of Governance Structures," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-24, February.
    4. Daniel Wuebben & Juan Romero-Luis & Manuel Gertrudix, 2020. "Citizen Science and Citizen Energy Communities: A Systematic Review and Potential Alliances for SDGs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-24, December.
    5. Minuto, Francesco Demetrio & Lanzini, Andrea, 2022. "Energy-sharing mechanisms for energy community members under different asset ownership schemes and user demand profiles," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    6. Gjorgievski, Vladimir Z. & Cundeva, Snezana & Georghiou, George E., 2021. "Social arrangements, technical designs and impacts of energy communities: A review," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 1138-1156.
    7. Gährs, Swantje & Knoefel, Jan, 2020. "Stakeholder demands and regulatory framework for community energy storage with a focus on Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    8. Fouladvand, Javanshir & Aranguren Rojas, Maria & Hoppe, Thomas & Ghorbani, Amineh, 2022. "Simulating thermal energy community formation: Institutional enablers outplaying technological choice," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PA).
    9. Sanneke Kloppenburg & Robin Smale & Nick Verkade, 2019. "Technologies of Engagement: How Battery Storage Technologies Shape Householder Participation in Energy Transitions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-15, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Julia Maria Wittmayer & Tessa de Geus & Bonno Pel & F. Avelino & Sabine Hielscher & Thomas Hoppe & Marie Susan Mühlemeier & Agata Stasik & Sem Oxenaar & Karoline K.S. Rogge & Vivian Visser & Esther Ma, 2020. "Beyond instrumentalism: Broadening the understanding of social innovation in socio-technical energy systems," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/312323, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Maqbool, Amtul Samie & van der Waal, Esther & van der Windt, Henny, 2023. "‘Luctor et emergo’, how a community energy initiative survived the changing policy and technology landscape of the Dutch energy system?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    3. Esther C. van der Waal & Alexandra M. Das & Tineke van der Schoor, 2020. "Participatory Experimentation with Energy Law: Digging in a ‘Regulatory Sandbox’ for Local Energy Initiatives in the Netherlands," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-21, January.
    4. Jessica K. Breadsell & Christine Eon & Gregory M. Morrison, 2019. "Understanding Resource Consumption in the Home, Community and Society through Behaviour and Social Practice Theories," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-18, November.
    5. Wittmayer, Julia M. & Avelino, Flor & Pel, Bonno & Campos, Inês, 2021. "Contributing to sustainable and just energy systems? The mainstreaming of renewable energy prosumerism within and across institutional logics," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    6. Gährs, Swantje & Knoefel, Jan, 2020. "Stakeholder demands and regulatory framework for community energy storage with a focus on Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    7. Thomas Hoppe & Frans H. J. M. Coenen & Maria T. Bekendam, 2019. "Renewable Energy Cooperatives as a Stimulating Factor in Household Energy Savings," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-33, March.
    8. Thomas Hoppe & Gerdien De Vries, 2018. "Social Innovation and the Energy Transition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, December.
    9. Burchell, Kevin & Rettie, Ruth & Roberts, Tom C., 2016. "Householder engagement with energy consumption feedback: the role of community action and communications," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 178-186.
    10. Brown, Christopher J. & Markusson, Nils, 2019. "The responses of older adults to smart energy monitors," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 218-226.
    11. Filippo Corsini & Rafael Laurenti & Franziska Meinherz & Francesco Paolo Appio & Luca Mora, 2019. "The Advent of Practice Theories in Research on Sustainable Consumption: Past, Current and Future Directions of the Field," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-19, January.
    12. Giulietti, Monica & Le Coq, Chloé & Willems, Bert & Anaya, Karim, 2019. "Smart Consumers in the Internet of Energy : Flexibility Markets & Services from Distributed Energy Resources," Other publications TiSEM 2edb43b5-bbd6-487d-abdf-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    13. Joeri Naus & Hilje M van der Horst, 2017. "Accomplishing information and change in a smart grid pilot: Linking domestic practices with policy interventions," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(3), pages 379-396, May.
    14. Kevin B. Caldwell & Robert H. W. Boyer, 2019. "Bicycle commuting in an automobile-dominated city: how individuals become and remain bike commuters in Charlotte, North Carolina," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(5), pages 1785-1806, October.
    15. Farrelly, M.A. & Tawfik, S., 2020. "Engaging in disruption: A review of emerging microgrids in Victoria, Australia," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    16. de Boer, Jessica & Zuidema, Christian & van Hoorn, Anton & de Roo, Gert, 2018. "The adaptation of Dutch energy policy to emerging area-based energy practices," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 142-150.
    17. Busch, Henner & Ruggiero, Salvatore & Isakovic, Aljosa & Hansen, Teis, 2021. "Policy challenges to community energy in the EU: A systematic review of the scientific literature," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    18. Heldeweg, Michiel A. & Séverine Saintier,, 2020. "Renewable energy communities as ‘socio-legal institutions’: A normative frame for energy decentralization?," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    19. Schwanen, Tim & Banister, David & Anable, Jillian, 2012. "Rethinking habits and their role in behaviour change: the case of low-carbon mobility," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 522-532.
    20. Josephine Mylan & Helen Holmes & Jessica Paddock, 2016. "Re-Introducing Consumption to the ‘Circular Economy’: A Sociotechnical Analysis of Domestic Food Provisioning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(8), pages 1-14, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:11:p:3230-:d:238961. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.