Social innovation in community energy in Europe: a review of the evidence

Citizen-driven Renewable Energy (RE) projects of various kinds, known collectively as community energy (CE), have an important part to play in the worldwide transition to cleaner energy systems. On the basis of evidence from literature review and an exploratory survey of 8 European countries, we investigate European CE through the lens of Social Innovation (SI). Broadly, three main phases of SI in CE can be identified. The environmental movements of the 1960s and the “oil shocks” of the 1970s provided the catalyst for a series of innovative societal responses around energy and self-sufficiency. These first wave CE innovations included cooperatives (e.g. in Sweden and Germany) who financed and managed risks for RE developments in the absence of support from governments and banks. A second wave of SI relates to the mainstreaming of RE and associated government support mechanisms. In this phase, with some important exceptions, successful CE initiatives were mainly confined to those countries where they were already embedded as innovators in the previous phase. In former communist countries of central and eastern Europe (Poland, former East Germany) CE development was hindered by societal mistrust of cooperative movements for their association with the state socialism of the past. In Scotland, UK, strong public support was given to CE, and a new form, the Community Development Trust, emerged and was later replicated elsewhere in the UK. The third phase of CE innovation relates to the societal response to the Great Recession that began in 2007-8 and lasted most of the subsequent decade. Though climate change had become a pressing concern, CE initiatives formed around this time were also strongly focused around democratization of energy and citizen empowerment in the context of rising energy prices, a weak economy, and a production and supply system dominated by excessively powerful multinational energy firms. CE initiatives today are more diverse than at any time previously, and though seriously constrained by mainstream energy policy in most countries, are likely to continue to act as incubators for pioneering initiatives addressing virtually all aspects of energy.