Community Energy Literature Review

This post will draw on three papers published this year which are all concerned with the role of locally based energy projects in the transition towards net zero. The first discusses the situation in the UK; the second addresses the wider European picture; and the third concentrates on community energy in Portugal. Each paper covers a range of issues, but here the focus will be on the importance of community engagement and how to promote and evaluate it. UK energy projects Gupta, Zahiri and Gregg (2026) consider three kinds of project in the UK: community energy, local energy, and smart local energy systems; their study suggests ways in which the effectiveness of such projects can be improved. The differences between projects described by the terms community energy, local energy, and smart local energy systems can be loosely summed up as follows. Community energy projects are typically owned and controlled by members of a local community and aim to benefit the community. They oft...

Plans to capture solar energy from “solar farms” in space and beam it to earth were reported by Pallab Ghosh in a recent BBC news report (Ghosh, 2022). The article anticipated approval of a three-year feasibility and economic study aimed at eventually sending gigawatts of power to earth from space to help address future energy shortages. A few days later Olivia Allen reported that ESA, the European Space Agency, had approved plans for further research into Space Based Solar Power, SBSP (Allen, 2022). The project, known as SOLARIS, “will carry out research with the aim of developing huge orbiting satellites fitted with solar panels that can collect the sun’s energy and wirelessly beam it down to Earth.” Allen traces the concept back to the 1970s, but regards the technology as only now close to what is needed to realise the idea. Orbiting solar panels would receive continuous sunlight and so provide continuous power to receivers on earth, transmitting energy over a distance of 36,000km...

An article on the effects of war in Ukraine written early in the conflict opens with the statement that the “first and most serious tragedy of any armed conflict is its direct effects: every war brings with it a heavy burden of civilian and military casualties from warfare” (Dumčiūtė and Tecleme, 2022). The authors refer also to indirect victims such as refugees, the impoverished, and those who suffer malnutrition and loss of work and education, but they note as well that there are environmental consequences which may in time cause more deaths than the war itself. These effects and some other possible future developments are explored in the papers cited below. Khan (2022) discusses the war in Ukraine in the context of other post WWII conflicts, such as the bombing of Kosovo, the conflicts in Afghanistan, the Iraq-Iran War, the Gulf Wars, the Yemeni civil war and the war in Syria. She refers to the use of Agent Orange and other toxic chemicals by US forces in Vietnam and claims that t...

    O’Malley et al. (2016) proposed the definition that “Energy Systems Integration (ESI) is the process of coordinating the operation and planning of energy systems across multiple pathways and/or geographical scales to deliver reliable, cost effective energy services with minimal impact on the environment.” The vectors which transfer energy from its source to where it is needed, usually at a distance and often at a later time, include electricity, fuels such as oil and gas, and heat-exchanging materials such as the fluids in a central heating system.   O’Malley et al. stress the interaction between the different energy vectors, and with transport, water and communications systems. They note that every energy system is different, that the people involved in such systems have different motivations, incentives, and information, and that “there may be no coordination across these domains to determine the best option for all actors involved.” The authors identify three...

  Ammonia is of interest in the context of global decarbonisation not only because it can be used as a carrier of hydrogen, but also because it can be a carbon-free fuel in its own right. Kobayashi et al. (2019) note the difficulties of transporting and storing hydrogen, and that ammonia, which is much easier to handle, “comprises 17.8% of hydrogen by mass and can be produced from renewable hydrogen and nitrogen separated from air.” Since ammonia has long been used “as a fertilizer, chemical raw material, and refrigerant” there is ample experience in its use. The paper explores the successful use of ammonia as fuel in gas turbines and in industrial furnaces, and discusses methods of overcoming problems associated with its use, such as low combustibility and the production of nitrogen oxides (NOx). The authors have a particular interest in ammonia as a means of satisfying Japan’s need for imported carbon-free fuel, following closure of all its nuclear power plants in 2011 after th...

  In his book on the strategy needed to enable the UK to address the threat from climate change, Chris Goodall mentions hydrogen more than a hundred times (Goodall, 2020). Describing the connection between renewable energy and hydrogen, he cites “ the great British biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who foresaw the importance of renewable electricity combined with hydrogen as the basis of the entire energy system as early as 1923”. Here is part of Haldane’s lecture, given in Cambridge:   “Personally, I think that … the power question in England may be solved somewhat as follows: The country will be covered with rows of metallic windmills working electric motors which in their turn supply current at a very high voltage to great electric mains. At suitable distances, there will be great power stations where during windy weather the surplus power will be used for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen. These gasses will be … stored in … reservoirs, probably s...