Financing electricity resilience in local communities: a review of the literature

Over the last two decades, research increasingly has paid attention to resilience as a way to strengthen electricity systems against the cascading impacts caused by electricity disruptions. Although much of the electricity resilience literature has focused on scale of large grids, a growing segment of research has focused on smaller-scale electricity systems, particularly with applications for communities. Research on financing these systems could encourage their uptake in local communities, particularly by including community in the ownership or operation of these systems; however, much of this research remains comparatively nascent. This paper seeks to review what previous studies have identified as some of the conditions that shape financing electricity resilience in local communities in G7 countries and how this field uses the term “electricity resilience” compared to broader uses of electricity resilience. The review provides a technical overview of smaller-scale systems for communities and a review of three socio-economic research areas—governance, cost-benefits, and business models—which shape financing electricity resilience in local communities. The discussion section finds that costs and the level of community involvement seem to play a fundamental role in shaping the conditions for financing electricity resilience across much of the research. Comparing this field to broader uses of “electricity resilience” suggests that more work is needed to understand the role of adaptation in financing electricity resilience for local communities, particularly over the long term. We posit that the field’s approach costs and its inclusion of the community in electricity resilience may contribute to its general lack of attention to long-run adaptation. Despite potential benefits of continued advancements from technical research, the maturity of the field and age of some of the early cases suggests that researchers could begin to study adaptation to electricity disruptions at the community level more than in the past.