Germany probably has one of the largest community energy sectors in Europe and worldwide. The national government has not (yet) used the Clean Energy Package as a window of opportunity, as in other countries with less strong community energy heritage, to foster or revitalise Germany’s stagnating community energy sector—despite or because of being a community energy front-runner. The author emphasises institutional fit, path dependence, and existing actors and motivations to explain such a “law of the disadvantageous lead”. On the other hand, he highlights questions of timing, sub-national and multilevel policy dynamics and the dominating narrative as explanations for this finding. Overall, changes in energy policy leave German community energy companies in a struggle to find new business models and to professionalise.