Understanding Social Practices of Community Energy: A Situational Analysis Approach to an International Comparison

Community energy drives the transition of energy systems in front runners Scotland, Denmark and Germany. Previous research has focused on community energy projects as strategic niches of renewable energy implementation and acceptance building. Focus was placed with community as actor, scale or place. Yet, its contribution to sustainability transitions by providing experimental spaces of social practice remain underresearched and undertheorized. Questions of community as identity, process and network were neglected. This disregards the potential of community energy as forms of social practices, as well as the expression and reproduction of expanded concepts of citizenship. This paper focuses on community energy in Scotland, Denmark and Germany and it is based on the methodology of situational analysis. The underlying research is focused on social practices of sustainability transitions within community owned and managed energy initiatives. The paper furthermore questions and expounds often underlying ideas of community energy projects as homogeneous and stable entities. Instead we provide an understanding of community energy as ambivalent, complex, and dynamic processes. The comparison of projects in front runner states with significant shares of community owned renewable energies both extends the understanding of the contribution of community energy to international leadership in energy transitions as well as underscores the relevance of acknowledging (the diversity of) social practices of community energy in policy design. It is argued that community energy projects provide modes of expressing and operationalizing alternative concepts of citizenship. Beyond expanding the role for community energy in sustainability transitions, this enables an improved understanding of the influence of energy politics on the expression and increase of social capital.