Community Energy in the UK, Germany and the USA

Comparing CE in the UK, Germany and the USA

A paper in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 94 (2018) compares aspects of Community Energy (CE) in three countries. The author, Vasco Brummer, seeks to sum up the current state of knowledge on the subject, and to pursue the themes of societal benefits from, and barriers to community energy in each country.
The paper “Community energy – benefits and barriers: A comparative literature review of Community Energy in the UK, Germany and the USA, the benefits it provides for society and the barriers it faces” is not currently available on open access.
The countries were selected partly to reflect differences in their policies towards supporting and regulating CE, and the effects on its development. Germany was an early adopter of a Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) scheme supporting Renewable Energy (RE), and this helped to build a strong CE movement. In the UK a more market-driven approach was taken, with a renewable portfolio standard (RPS)obliging energy utilities to generate a fixed quota of their electricity from RE or pay compensation. A FiT scheme was later added later for certain projects. The United States has a wide variety of RE incentives from state to state.
The paper has three research questions: What is meant by the term Community Energy? What benefits are generated for society by CE in each country? What are the barriers that CE has to face in each country?
62 papers were chosen for the literature review, and the author clearly describes the principles of selection.
Ways of understanding “Community”and “Community Energy” are discussed.
Seven broad types of benefit are identified and compared according to their prominence in the literature. As examples, references to ‘community building and self realisation’ occur more or less equally with regard to the UK, Germany and the USA, but references to ‘economic benefits’ occur much more frequently in papers on the UK than in those of the other two countries. The benefits of innovation are referred to in papers on CE in Germany and the USA, but not in those on the UK.
Barriers are also placed in seven broad groups; lack of resources, expertise and resilience are frequently noted in papers on CE in the UK and Germany, rarely in those on the USA. Lack of institutional and political support is noted much more often in the UK context than in that of Germany or the USA.
In his summary on each country, Brummer notes that in the UK the great complexity of the regulations on electricity generation and marketing demand “outstanding effort and expertise for non-professional individuals and groups to enter the market”, in a situation which still favours large-scale centralised energy generation. CE in Germany is characterised by the prevalence of Renewable Energy Cooperatives, but discrimination against CE by policymakers can still be a problem. CE in the USA is not recognised as a form of engagement having unique policy needs and “big energy” is still favoured by policymakers. CE initiatives are treated as rivals by incumbents.
The paper ends with a discussion which stresses the general reliance of CE on policy and incentives.




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