Come Together—The Development of Swedish Energy Communities

Dick Magnusson and Jenny Palm
Additional contact information
Dick Magnusson: Department of Thematic Studies—Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden
Jenny Palm: The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: Community energy (CE) and grassroots innovations have been widely studied in recent years, especially in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, but very little focus has been placed on Sweden. This paper describes and analyses the development and present state of several types of community energy initiatives in Sweden. The methodology uses interviews, document studies, analysis of previous studies, and website analysis. The results show that fewer initiatives have been taken in Sweden than in other countries, but that even with a rather ‘hostile’ institutional setting CE has emerged as a phenomenon. Wind cooperatives are the most common form of initiative, with solar photovoltaics cooperatives and eco-villages also prominent. The various types of initiatives differ considerably, from well-organized wind cooperatives that have grown into professional organizations to small-scale hydroelectric power plants owned by a rural community. The initiatives may have modest impact on the energy transition in quantitative terms, but they are crucial in knowledge sharing and as inspirations for future initiatives.

Keywords: community energy; grassroots innovations; energy cooperatives; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/4/1056/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/4/1056/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:4:p:1056-:d:206831

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().