A Collaborative Dimension for Renewable Energy Communities

Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) are collective entities whose membership is based on free and voluntary participation. RECs may involve groups of citizens, social entrepreneurs, public authorities, and community organizations that participate either directly or indirectly in the energy transition by exchanging energy-related goods and services either “for-profit” or “non-profit” within a community or ecosystem. REC members can jointly produce their own energy, which can be used locally, stored, sold, or shared with others in the ecosystem. Despite several pilot implementations of RECs, several challenges remain in terms of organization, governance and creation of incentives for participation, etc. To address these challenges, we propose the exploitation of a collaborative dimension. Thus, the concept of Collaborative Renewable Energy Community (CREC) is introduced as a type of REC that adopts collaborative principles and mechanisms to facilitate the production, sale, and sharing of renewable energy within an ecosystem. Just like many emerging concepts, the dominant literature in energy communities loosely points to this idea of CRECs but in a sparse, sometimes incoherent, disjointed, and disorganized manner, which creates a sense of ambiguity and confusion, making it difficult to comprehend the importance of the concept. In this work, we attempt to clarify the CREC concept, shed some light on their organizational structure, introduce their governance systems, and identify the types of collaborative mechanisms that can be adopted. Simulation was used as a preliminary validation of the proposed approach and models. The article further discusses some potential applications of CRECs.