Introduction: Renewable Energy Communities and the Low Carbon Energy Transition in Europe

The Introduction chapter positions the goal and central questions of the volume in relevant academic debates surrounding the growing academic domain of community energy. It introduces the concept of ‘energy communities’ against the background of the EU's “Clean energy for all Europeans” package. Four general observations on developments in community energy are made and discussed. The central question in this volume is: How did renewable energy communities in continental Europe evolve, and what can be learned from these experiences for the realization and implementation of the Clean Energy Package? To help answering this question four sub-questions are formulated that are related to the four observations made. These observations are then discussed, more particularly based on revised EU directives, in particular the Renewables Directive and the Electricity Directive, and what they imply for the community energy movement. This forms the basis of the volume.