Community Energy in Italy: Heterogeneous institutional characteristics and citizens engagement

Chiara Candelise and Gianluca Ruggieri

No 93, IEFE Working Papers from IEFE, Center for Research on Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Abstract: Community energy (CE) initiatives for investments in the energy sector have been progressively spreading across Europe and are increasingly proposed as innovative and alternative approaches to guarantee higher citizens participation in the transition toward cleaner energy systems. This paper focuses the attention on Italy, a Southern European country characterized by relatively low CE sector development. It fills a gap in the literature by eliciting and presenting novel and comprehensive evidence on the recent Italian CE sector development. Through a step-wise approach it systematically map and review Italian CE initiatives, exploring heterogeneity in their institutional characteristics and analysing implications in terms of outcomes delivered and citizens' engagement. It finds a very novel CE sector, still at its niche level and characterized by a wide diversity of implementation approaches. The analysis allows to identify two alternative patterns in institutional characteristics which differently shape citizens engagement and outcomes delivered. The role of policy and its relevance for a renewed CE sector growth is also highlighted and discussed.

Keywords: Community energy; Institutional characteristics; Renewable energy; Citizen participation; Energy cooperatives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 O35 P13 P32 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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