There are many definitions of Energy Communities; however, they all agree in considering Energy Communities as a way for citizens to collectively respond to energy needs that are priority for their community in which they live, and consistent with the EU decarbonisation goals.

Two recent directives part of the Clean Energy for All Europeans Package, i.e., the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II1) and the Electricity Market Directive (IEM2), aimed of putting citizens at the centre of a new production and consumption model, invite EU member states to regulate and promote solutions of increasing complexity: individual self-consumption, collective self-consumption and Energy Communities.

In particular, Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) are intended as open to the voluntary participation of citizens, local authorities and small and medium-sized enterprises, according to a model in which choices are shared among the members of the community in an independent and autonomous way. The ultimate goal of Energy Communities is to provide their members with environmental, economic and social benefits, rather than financial profits. This aspect is crucial in this time when the strategies of Europe, Italy included, for achieving greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives and transitioning to renewable energy sources, are increasingly based on citizen involvement.

As part of the 2019-2021 System Research Plan, cost-benefit analyses will be carried out for certain Renewable Energy Community demonstration projects and, albeit at a different scale, collective self-consumption scheme projects, to assess the energy, economic, environmental and social benefits that can be obtained both by people and entities involved in these communities or schemes and for the electricity and energy system as a whole.

In this first year, the research objectives are the identification of all the possible barriers that hinder the diffusion of Energy Communities and the selection of suitable entities for the development of some demonstration projects.

To this end, expressions of interest were collected which allowed us to identify some promoters of Renewable Energy Communities, which, with the support of local institutions, can involve a large number of users in a limited area equipped with renewable energy generation plants. In order to best achieve the project objectives, in addition to minimum admissibility criteria, reward criteria were defined, aimed at valorising the case studies that are the most replicable and the most representative of certain territorial areas. Lastly, with a view to also extending the analyses to collective condominium or building self-consumption, which we could define as an elementary model of Energy Communities, a procedure was activated for selecting entities interested in implementing these schemes as defined in the European Directives.