Dear Colleagues,

Energy communities are facing changing regulatory and technological landscapes, which represent both opportunities for and barriers to their development. On the one hand, the new European clean energy regulation envisages important roles for energy communities in energy systems and provides enabling conditions for their deployment (EU, 2019). Furthermore, new types of interactions among active consumers, prosumers and prosumagers are emerging, often facilitated by decentralized storage, smart grid technologies, distributed energy resources and other small-scale technologies, as well as local exchanges enabled by innovative blockchain-based peer-to-peer trading platforms and local energy markets (Giotitsas et al., 2015; Hahnel et al., 2019; Koirala et al., 2018b, 2019; Parra et al., 2016, 2017). All these evolutions create new opportunities for energy communities to play an active role in transitioning towards more sustainable energy systems (Devine-Wright, 2019; van der Schoor and Scholtens, 2019; Rommel et al., 2018; Karunathilake et al., 2018; Koirala et al., 2016; Bauwens, 2016; Schoor et al., 2016; Dóci et al., 2015). In turn, the integration of electricity, heating and transport sector together with community engagement is expected to contribute to more flexible, cost effective and efficient local energy systems (Koirala et al., 2016; Thellufsen and Lund, 2016). In this regard, energy communities are a modern development to re-organize the energy system to simultaneously integrate distributed energy resources and engage local communities (Bauwens and Devine-Wright, 2018; Koirala et al., 2016).

On the other hand, policies that have boosted the development of local renewable projects are being withdrawn across several European countries, including pioneers like Denmark and Germany, where shifts from feed-in tariffs to more market-based instruments have progressively taken place (Bauwens et al., 2016; Leiren and Reimer, 2018; Lundberg, 2019). This has led energy communities to become increasingly professional and commercial and to search for new business models. This has notably involved a diversification of their revenue streams by proposing other offerings on the top of renewable energy generation, for example electric mobility services, energy efficiency models and demand side management (Funkhouser et al., 2015; Gui and MacGill, 2018; Herbes et al., 2017; Mirzania et al., 2019). Another notable evolution is the emergence of networks, intermediaries, coalitions and collaborative dynamics among initiatives, which help existing and aspiring communities with various aspects of project development and advocacy work (Bauwens et al., 2019; Hargreaves et al., 2013; Huybrechts and Haugh, 2018).

These changes in policies and business models will likely have consequences on the forms of, and motivations behind, participation in energy communities. Until recently, energy communities were driven by environmentally or socially motivated collectives of citizens willing to collaborate, share benefit and challenge incumbent energy systems (Bauwens, 2016; Koirala et al., 2018a; Rogers et al., 2008; Wirth, 2014). It remains to be seen how these policy changes and these evolutions in business models will affect the dynamics of community engagement. Similarly whether, these new networks and intermediary organizations will be able to ensure the inclusion of a broader diversity of communities is an open question.

This special issue in Sustainabilty will focus on the process aspects of the ongoing energy transition by contributing to knowledge acquisition on how these changing policy and technological landscapes affect energy communities in terms of conditions for emergence and development, motivations and social dynamics of collective action and participation business models, energy system integration options, local energy market design, policy and regulatory issues, socio-technical configurations and community engagement. In this context, this special issue invites interdisciplinary contributions on technological, socio-economic and institutional aspects of energy communities as well as their roles on the ongoing energy transition.

We invite manuscripts on following (not limited) topics:

- Local, virtual and hybrid energy communities

- Positive energy districts and neighborhoods

- Energy communities as commons

- Opportunities for and challenges to energy communities

- Enabling technologies and digitalization

- Techno-economic and socio-institutional assessments of energy communities

- (Self-) governance, ownership, business models, cost-benefit allocations

- Polycentricity, meta-governance, and policy-mix approach for energy communities

- Design of local energy markets

- Demand response and flexibility in energy communities

- Intrinsic motivations and drivers for energy communities

- Energy system integration and role of multi-energy carriers (electricity, hydrogen, heat)

- Socio-technical innovations and alignments

- Citizens and community engagement

- Regulation and legal frameworks for energy communities

- Changing roles and responsibilities

- Multi-actor perspectives on energy communities

- Energy communities and local/regional energy transition

- Energy Citizenship

- Digital twins of energy communities

Keywords: Community energy, community engagement, renewable energy, energy transition, peer-peer energy exchange, business models, institutional design, energy citizenship, (self-) governance, socio-technical innovation

Guest editors:

Binod Koirala

David Parra

Thomas Bauwens