There are numerous definitions of Energy Communities , but all agree in considering them a way that citizens can adopt of organizing themselves in order to respond collectively to certain energy needs, recognized as priorities by the community in which they live, and consistent with the decarbonization objectives assumed at European level.

Two recent directives part of the Clean Energy for All Europeans Package, the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II1) and the Electricity Market Directive (IEM2), with the aim of putting citizens at the center of a new production and consumption model, invite 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 configured as a body open to the voluntary participation of citizens, local authorities and small and medium-sized enterprises, according to a model in which decisions are shared among the members of the community in an independent and autonomous way. The ultimate goal of these communities is to provide their members with environmental, economic and social benefits, rather than financial profit. This aspect appears crucial, at a time when the strategies of Europe, but also of Italy, in relation to achieving their objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning to renewable energy sources, are increasingly based on citizen engagement.

Within the framework of the Three-Year System Research Plan 2019-2021, this project will carry out a cost-benefit analysis of some demo projects of Renewable Energy Communities and, albeit at a different scale, of collective self-consumption schemes, assessing the benefits obtainable from an energy, economic, environmental and social point of view, both for the entities involved in such communities or schemes and for the electricity system as a whole.

The objectives of the work in this first year were to identify all the possible barriers to the diffusion of Energy Communities and the selection of suitable entities for the development of 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, where there are renewable energy generation plants. In order to best satisfy the project objectives, in addition to minimum admissibility criteria, reward criteria were defined in the choice of demonstration projects, aimed at promoting the most representative case studies of certain territorial areas and with greater replicability potential. Lastly, with a view to extending the analyses also to collective apartment block or building self-consumption, which could be defined as an elementary model of Energy Community, a procedure was activated for the selection of possible entities interested in implementing these schemes as defined in the European Directives.