About the importance of national settings for energy communities

The information in this presentation is taken from the NEWCOMERS project research activity, summarized in the deliverable titled Description of polycentric settings in the partner countries that you can find on this link: https://www.newcomersh2020.eu/upload/files/D2_2_newcomers_typology_of_new_clean_energy_communities_DEF.pdf We developed the content of this presentation with the expert support by prof. Jenny Palm and dr. Katharina Reindl from the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University in Sweden, the NEWCOMERS project consortium partner. 2. CENTRAL PART – CONTENT In general, what do we mean when we talk about polycentric national settings? The 'polycentric' aspect relates to the theoretical framework that the NEWCOMERS project has developed, the so called theoretical framework focusing on learning in polycentric settings. Here, we focus on different sets of relevant data for 6 European countries, which are the NEWCOMERS project partner countries: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK. These countries were selected because they differ in aspects that are assumed to be relevant for the activities of energy communities, such as energy generation, regulations, organisation of the electricity market and the diversity of actors. In the mentioned deliverable, we first describe the country's: - Socio-economic conditions, e.g. population data, land area, GDP, employment rate... - the technical system, where data like energy production and consumption, the electricity system (incl. data on electricity generation, electricity generation mix, exports and imports, installed capacity, peak demand), and electricity consumption by sector are described; additionally, data on electricity grid and smart grids are included; the next comes the description of the heating systems, and a table of energy related emissions is added as well - the institutional arrangements sub-section explains the political goals and national energy agreements, and the countries' performance on the EU 2020 energy targets. The electricity market, policy and law are briefly presented as well as the subsidies and tax schemes, and the electricity prices. - the action arena sub-section presents the key public and market actors, e.g. government and authorities, the market actors, and the energy communities themselves. Why is this information relevant to you? Understanding these socio-economic, technical, institutional and stakeholder settings in different countries is the first step to understand the emergence (or non-emergence) of new forms of energy communities. Let's hear a short video statement by prof. Jenny Palm about the importance of analyzing the national settings. Need for comparable data The national data collected is comparable across countries, therefore units and terminology by the IEA are used. As with IEA, all data is converted to a common energy unit, namely tonnes of oil equivalent (toe), defined as 10 to 7 kilocalories (or 41.868 gigajoules). A common energy unit allows us to see the total amount of energy used and the relative contribution of each different energy source. We also follow IEA's terminology including Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES) as the overall energy supply available for use in a country, and Total Final Consumption (TFC) as the energy that is actually used by final consumers. For the socio-economic background, information from websites such as Worldometer, Statistics times or Trading economics is used for all 6 analyzed countries. As there are separate Content Items on the Our Energy platform, presenting the national data settings, we will not go into data-details here. But in order to raise your interest in exploring deeper, here is a preview of one of the presentations. Interested to find out more information about national settings for energy communities in one or more of the following European countries: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden or the UK? The NEWCOMERS project offers these data, please click here: /link na D3.1/