Community Energy Enterprises: communities, socio-institutional systems and management of the future distributed energy geography

The debate on distributed energy systems is evolving in a way that enlarge the domain of traditional energy policy, especially regarding institutional and organisational aspects. The present thesis discusses on the possibility to adopt Community Energy Enterprises as a specific organisational model that may represent a crucial and not yet explored tool to enhance the diffusion of a distributed energy system, promoting new urban and regional developments. The crucial issue here is that in a distributed energy system distribution we may refer not only to production units, but also to ownership, decision- making and local responsibility as regards new forms of energy provision, infrastructures and organizations. With these objectives the paper discusses in a multi-scalar perspective the role of this specific organizations may innovate the governance of the current energy system, as part of bottom-up based socio-material transition in the energy market: mobilising specific territorial factors, institutions and approaches in users and citizens’ engagement.