TY - CHAP

T1 - Community Energy in Germany

T2 - From Technology Pioneers to Professionalisation under Uncertainty

AU - Holstenkamp, Lars

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Energy research

KW - Bürgerenergie

KW - Geschichte

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/cf581ba2-d66c-3825-9a5a-3c402035666c/

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135560750&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-84440-0_6

DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-84440-0_6

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

SN - 978-3-030-84439-4

SP - 119

EP - 152

BT - Renewable Energy Communities and the Low Carbon Energy Transition in Europe

A2 - Coenen, Frans H.J.M.

A2 - Hoppe, Thomas

PB - Palgrave Macmillan

CY - Cham

ER -