TY - JOUR

T1 - Collective Renewable Energy Prosumers and the Promises of the Energy Union

T2 - Taking Stock

AU - Horstink, Lanka

AU - Wittmeyer, Julia M.

AU - Ng, Kiat

AU - Pontes Luz, Guilherme

AU - Marín-González, Esther

AU - Gährs, Swantje

AU - Campos, Inês

AU - Holstenkamp, Lars

AU - Oxenaar, Sem

AU - Brown, Donal

N1 - Funding Information: The research leading to the results presented in this article has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº764056. K.N. was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) postdoctoral fellowship grant (SFRH/BPD/120394/2016). The authors wish to thank the following researchers for their contribution to the data collection and to the discussion that formed the basis of the present analysis: Mark Soares (UPORTO); Jeremie Fosse (ECO-UNION); Kristian Petrick (ECO-UNION); Mireia Reus (ECO-UNION); Thijs Scholten (CE Delft); Bettina Kampman (CE Delft); Mark Davis (ULeeds); Stephen Hall (ULeeds); Arthur Hinsch (ICLEI); Marta Toporek (CLIENTEARTH); Michele Zuin (ICLEI); Moritz Ehrtmann (LEUPHANA); Tomislav Novosel (UNIZAG); Tomislav Puksec (UNIZAG); and Ana Lovrak (UNIZAG). Publisher Copyright: © 2020 by the authors

PY - 2020/1/15

Y1 - 2020/1/15

N2 - A key strategy in the European Union’s ambition to establish an ‘Energy Union’ that is not just clean, but also fair, consists of empowering citizens to actively interact with the energy market as self-consumers or prosumers. Although renewable energy sources (RES) prosumerism has been growing for at least a decade, two new EU directives are intended to legitimise and facilitate its expansion. However, little is known about the full range of prosumers against which to measure policy effectiveness. We carried out a documentary study and an online survey in nine EU countries to shed light on the demographics, use of technology, organisation, financing, and motivation as well as perceived hindering and facilitating factors for collective prosumers. We identified several internal and external obstacles to the successful mainstreaming of RES prosumerism, among them a mismatch of policies with the needs of different RES prosumer types, potential organisational weaknesses as well as slow progress in essential reforms such as decentralising energy infrastructures. Our baseline results offer recommendations for the transposition of EU directives into national legislations and suggest avenues for future research in the fields of social, governance, policy, technology, and business models.

AB - A key strategy in the European Union’s ambition to establish an ‘Energy Union’ that is not just clean, but also fair, consists of empowering citizens to actively interact with the energy market as self-consumers or prosumers. Although renewable energy sources (RES) prosumerism has been growing for at least a decade, two new EU directives are intended to legitimise and facilitate its expansion. However, little is known about the full range of prosumers against which to measure policy effectiveness. We carried out a documentary study and an online survey in nine EU countries to shed light on the demographics, use of technology, organisation, financing, and motivation as well as perceived hindering and facilitating factors for collective prosumers. We identified several internal and external obstacles to the successful mainstreaming of RES prosumerism, among them a mismatch of policies with the needs of different RES prosumer types, potential organisational weaknesses as well as slow progress in essential reforms such as decentralising energy infrastructures. Our baseline results offer recommendations for the transposition of EU directives into national legislations and suggest avenues for future research in the fields of social, governance, policy, technology, and business models.

KW - Management studies

KW - renewable energy prosumer

KW - energy transition

KW - collective prosumer

KW - energy union

KW - community energy

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85078094573&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/en13020421

DO - 10.3390/en13020421

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 13

JO - Energies

JF - Energies

SN - 1996-1073

IS - 2

M1 - 421

ER -