Regulatory framework for Renewable Energy Communities in Austria, France and Italy: evaluation, investment analysis, comparatives and gaps

Efforts have been put some decades ago to beat, or at least mitigate as much as possible, climate change. Since the European Green Deal, empowering energy communities have been recognized as a way of involving and committing average citizens in the energy transition. As part of the Clean Energy for all Europeans package, the recast of the Renewable Energy Directive (REDII) entered into force, finally recognizing legally within the concept of Citizen and Renewable Energy Community (CEC and REC respectively). Member States are obliged to transpose the European provisions in national laws for these communities. The present work examines in detail the regulatory framework for Renewable Energy Communities, centred in residential photovoltaic projects, in Austria, France, and Italy, which are countries advanced in the transposition process. Subsequently, two different hypothesized REC configurations, maintaining the main general assumptions constant, were analysed from an investment perspective, to implement the already-explained legislation frameworks to identify the main revenues and costs sources for the establishment and management of RECs, in each single country. Furthermore, a cross-country comparison was conducted in terms of regulatory provisions and investment analysis results, enabling the identification of further recommendations for future concerned studies. At the end, based on the present work findings and state-of-the-art examined, there were identified main key issues and gaps to be addressed by national and, in general, by European laws regarding RECs for the near future. The analysis revealed that the main left-open aspects for member states to transpose into national laws are the proximity criteria of the REC, which quite often relies on the public network connection and/or the plant installed capacity; cost-reflective network charges for the REC shared energy and incentive and support schemes to promote and facilitate RECs deployment. For the years to come, European countries should focus on complete regulatory frameworks for RECs, including non-discriminatory REC-specific support schemes covering all-income levels participants, the cooperation of RECs with DSOs and contemplating proximity criteria, facility installation capacity and diverse members and shareholders in a legal support basis that is flexible enough to keep the innovation potential needed for different REC configurations to emerge. Finally, a proper way to manage a wide coupling of RECs in the overall European energy system for reaching the decentralization objectives is crucial, so that all players involved are affected at least possible by the transition.

N/A