PhD Defence: Jan Pedro Zeiss

Jan Pedro Zeiss 
CERDI, Université Clermont Auvergne
Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

Examiners

Arnaud Diemer, Associate Professor, Université Clermont Auvergne
August Wierling, Professor, Høgskulen På
Valeria Jana Schwanitz, Professor, Høgskulen På Vestlandet
Valeria Di Cosmo, Associate Professor, Università Degli Studi Di Torino
Nuria Rabanal, Associate Professor, Universidad De León
Ariane Dupont, Professor, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
Manuel Morales, Professor, Clermont School of Business
Cécile Batisse, Associate Professor, Université Clermont Auvergne

Résumé 

Anthropogenic climate change has been widely recognized as one of the largest challenges that we face today. In consequence, the majority of nations have agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This requires a rapid transition to an efficient energy system based on renewable energy technologies. However, as past energy transitions have shown, technological changes never occur in isolation but are always interlinked with significant social, cultural, economic and political changes. As such, the current energy transition also offers the opportunity to combat poverty and inequality and strengthen democratic decision-making processes, for instance.

Community Energy Initiatives (CEIs), broadly defined as initiatives for the energy transition, that are directly owned and democratically controlled by citizens, are regarded as important contributors to the achievement of these goals. A plethora of largely case-based studies suggest that CEIs could provide a variety of benefits, ranging from deploying and increasing acceptance for renewable energy to increasing local economic value creation, combatting energy poverty, increasing transparency and participation in the energy sector and strengthening community trust and cohesion.

At the same time, a smaller number of studies have contested this generally positive outlook, showing that some CEIs may not be as democratic and inclusive, or provide as many benefits, as often assumed. This begs the question, to what extent the impacts that individual examples of CEI evidently generate, materialize on the aggregate level across the European community energy sector. In view of the increasing support for CEI by European policy-makers, who hope that CEIs contribute to the achievement of the European energy and sustainability transition goals, there is a need for a better understanding of the aggregate level impacts of CEIs, allowing more evidence based policy-making.

This thesis aims to address these issues by investigating the evolution of the European community energy sector and the associated aggregate level impacts. It builds on an inventory of over 10,000 European CEIs that was compiled as part of an EU funded research project. The thesis follows three objectives. First, to map the diverse community energy sector across Europe in terms of organizational forms, activities and historical evolution. Second, to investigate current challenges in managing CEI data that hinder systematic monitoring of the sector’s development and impacts. Finally, to investigate how CEIs align with European energy policy goals, as well as different notions of the energy transition, ranging from a technological transition to a deeper societal sustainability transition.

On the European level, this thesis identifies five distinct phases of CEI development, each characterized by specific archetypical CEIs and policy contexts. Most important for the recent development of CEIs have been two contrasting policy approaches to supporting CEI, being universal feed-in tariffs and tailored mechanisms directly targeted at CEI. Yet, while these recent targeted support mechanisms emphasize the social nature of CEIs, in contrast to the more marketoriented CEIs established as a result of feed-in tariffs, this new approach also comes with new challenges. Chief among these is an increased need for monitoring and the associated reporting burden on CEIs, in order to ensure their adherence to the new requirements and consequently their eligibility for such support mechanisms. Overly complex administrative procedures have already been identified as a key barrier to the success of CEIs, indicating that the increased reporting requirements may negatively affect future activity within the sector.

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