Keywords

3.1 Introduction

Community energy is an alternative for decarbonisation, energy access and resilience. There are two distinct ways within which to approach the idea of community energy. On one hand, the notion of energy communities refers to organised ways in which groups of people provide themselves with energy. This approach is becoming more popular particularly in the context of energy transitions occurring within the European Union and forms the backbone governing small renewable energy systems in the region. On the other hand, the notion of community energy systems focuses on the organisation of communities to facilitate the generation of electricity. In both cases, the idea of community energy maps a heterogeneous array of decentralised models to manage energy provision.

Both these approaches engage deeply with the complex term ‘community’. The notion of ‘community’ has been increasingly used to design intervention programmes across diverse contexts—for example architectural projects, planning guidance, or development planning initiatives. However, ‘community’ as defined in these initiatives implicitly or explicitly black boxes the notion into a description of homogeneous individuals driven by a common shared interest in the landscape of intervention (see Rigon & Castán Broto, 2021, among many others). ‘Community’ is often linked to unrealistic portraits of idyllic groups of people living in harmony with their landscapes (Brint, 2001). Behind those idealistic fantasies, there is a complex landscape consisting of diverse groups of people living in proximity to each other—proximity that may be physical or ideological (Harvey, 1997). Communities are thus shaped by internal power relations, by complex institutional arrangements, as well as by their own individual interpersonal interactions with and between each other.

These inherent complexities to those communities are magnified when we think of community energy because it represents an interaction between complex communities and the equally complex socio-technical systems that support them. Community energy systems provide alternative models to the prevalent systems of privatised off-grid energy provision, in which infrastructure systems are managed by businesses. At the same time, communities may not have the consolidated structure of a private company. How then do they enable the management and governance of energy projects? To address these questions, it becomes important to unpack the notion of ‘community’ within community energy systems and what that means for how community energy projects are operationalised on ground.

This chapter reviews the notion of “community” as it is prevalent in various strands of scholarship and how criteria for inclusion and exclusion in these “communities” vary in subtle or distinctive ways. This helps explore the question of where the ‘community’ in community energy systems is and how communities are envisaged and conceptualised in the context of community energy projects. Subsequent sections offer an outline of the critical theory on community as well as different conceptualisations of the notion of community. The chapter focuses on three ideations of the word community—as a partnership between people with different objectives, as a nationalist-linked institution, and as a place-bounded group of people. The analysis reveals some of the pitfalls that exist in community development—including the risks surrounding elite capture, new forms of oppression, post-political decision making, and conflict. Nevertheless, the concept of ‘community’ has been mobilised in different discourses around community energy, including within academic literature and policy reports. The chapter goes on to demonstrate how community is an important gel that enables community-centric projects. At the same time, communities are dynamic. The term community needs to be interpreted in ways that seek to foster inclusion and dialogue between diverse groups of individuals rather than promoting the currently dominant homogeneous, exalted perspective of shared common ideals.

3.2 Understanding Community

A literature review of how the term community is deployed across scientific literature shows that the word ‘community’ is often used in both value-laden and unclear ways. This is consistent with previous literature on the topic—see for instance Head (2007) who describes the term as ‘notoriously vague and value-laden’ or Bryson and Mowbray (1981) who criticised the use of the term as a “spray-on solution” to address diverse societal and economic issues. At the same time, newer ideas of communities are constantly being mobilised, politicised, and perpetuated by an equally diverse range of actors—for instance emergent notions of energy communities, policy communities, or heritage communities (Alatalu, 2021; Caramizaru & Uihlein, 2020; Miller & Demir, 2007). Brosius and Hitchner (2000) call for greater critical reflection on the imaginaries of cultures, communities, and practices as being homogenous and eternally enduring and the positive and problematic impacts of such imaginaries on policy and practice.

The most dominant ways of using the term ‘community’ in contemporary literature include communities of interest and practice or action. The term ‘community’ further carries with it associations of multiple imaginaries—three of the most dominant ways in which the term is reimagined are—(a) to enforce an imagined oneness of nation, (b) to construct a sense of homogeneity based on geographical proximity, and (c) to envision partnerships of individuals coming together with a shared and common objective. Each of these forms of communities is not mutually exclusive and can often intersect within and across each other.

3.2.1 Communities of Interest

Scholarly literature on communities of interest has emerged from diverse disciplines—for instance from computer science and design (Fischer, 2001) to within critical social sciences and anthropology. Described as ‘communities of communities’ (Brown & Duguid, 2001), communities of interest are characterised by their shared interest in framing and resolving a particular problem (Harrington et al., 2008), are considered more transient or temporary in comparison to other forms of communities (Fischer, 2001). The assumption here is that while there is commonality in the objectives of the community, understanding the nature of the problem and developing a potential solution together is an incremental process, dependent upon effective communication between and across community members enabling the sharing of diverse skills and perspectives (Fischer, 2001). A core requirement for such communities to function effectively is the establishment of adequate boundaries through the establishment of boundary objects (Star, 1989) that have meaning across the various individual knowledge systems represented by a community of interest. Kelly (1996) identifies “transcendent” communities of interest characterised by groups located in multiple spaces that are linked beyond their physical geographies.

In more practical terms, communities of interest are often defined in terms of their common economic considerations or their belongingness to a shared industry (Rosenfeld & Duchin, 2022), thereby invoking calls for their inclusion within urban policy, governance, and practice—for instance to draw boundaries for districts within a jurisdictional area. Communities of interest have been posited to have multiple benefits—for instance their potential to represent marginalised views and present an alternative to dominant neoliberal discourses around resource governance and practice (Harrington et al., 2008; Mercer & Marden, 2006).

3.2.2 Communities of Practice

Communities of practice have been defined variously by different schools of thought, yet they all seem to converge on the idea of communities that demonstrate a sustained level of participation, engagement, and collaboration around a particular domain that revolves around a common theme with marked boundaries—for instance architecture and urban planning (Fischer, 2001). Wenger (1998) defines a community of practice as consisting of groups of individuals who interact with both each other as well as the world, towards pursuing an enterprise co-created and perpetuated by the group. A core assumption here is that these communities operate around a single knowledge system towards which people progress with greater experience built over time. Communities of practice are particularly distinguished by the presence of a shared practice between participants and the fact that they are based on rational interest as opposed to the forging of emotional ties between them (Wenger, 1998).

Studies have suggested however that practice can mean different things to different people and these subtle differences in the way the term is understood by diverse actor groups can often affect both participatory processes as well as the communities that emerge from them (Buchy & Race, 2001). Nelson and Wright (1995) distinguish between two different kinds of participatory processes based upon the purpose for which it is adopted. These include instrumental participation—where the tool is used to meet a specific goal; and transformation—where participation is used as a tool to deliver on social change objectives. Communities of practice therefore can differ even within themselves based on their intrinsic motivations and the objectives contained within their activities.

3.2.3 Imaginaries Associated with “Community”

The term community is associated with some distinctive imaginaries. Three of the most dominant ones are presented below:

3.2.3.1 Communities and Identity

Communities of identity emerge from socio-cultural ties that go beyond geographical proximity, but are formed through specific experiences, place associations, or practice giving rise to communal belonging and identification (Duane, 1997). One example of such communal identities is nationalism which gives rise to a form of mutual oneness, that can very well be defined as a community. Nationalism needs to be distinguished here from the actual emergence and formation of a nation state as an intangible consciousness permeating the collective identities of people who identify with it. Anderson (1983) argues that “nationality/nation-ness as well as nationalism are cultural artefacts of a particular kind”, one where the nation becomes an “imagined political economy”—both continuous through time as well as bounded by space (Stephens, 2013). These communities are “imagined” because members of even the smallest sovereign unit are unlikely to know or interact with most of their ‘community’. However, a sense of solidarity is constructed between these individuals based on (largely print media-propagated) myths of shared and common histories, and therefore a shared and common future (Sarsembayev, 1999). This of course raises further questions about the scale of this imagination, the modes in which it occurs, and whether any group of individuals possessing the right characteristics may be considered ‘imagined’ communities (Yael, 1995).

Imagined communities here are not defined by whether they are a group of individuals genuinely coming together for a shared common purpose, but rather by their imagination driving them towards constructed solidarity. Yael (1995) further distinguishes imagined communities as constructing mutual solidarities as based on beliefs of common ancestry, fraternity, genealogy, distinctiveness, and exclusivity (Yael, 1995). This notion of constructed communities is not fixed, but inclusion and exclusion within them is dynamic and dependent upon changing geopolitical conditions including immigration, teleconnections, recognition of gendered identities, or even mixed-race unions and global conspiracies (Malešević, 2020; Yael, 1995). Gellner takes a slightly different approach in arguing that nationalism is a product of social change, modernisation, and a growing awareness of class especially among the worker classes and intellectuals leading to their alienation from tradition and bringing them together to create a new or alternative sense of cultural homogeneity (Gellner, 1983). Smith goes on to state that nationalism as a force binding individuals cannot be understood without grounding the phenomenon in the idea of a ‘national identity’ which is collectively constructed (Smith, 1991).

In this context, studies that explore the emergence of nations and the emergence of nationalistic tendencies have argued that the romantic image of homogeneous, natural, and historical continuous communities as posited by nationalists are in fact mere mirages that do not reflect realities on ground (Yael, 1995). Other studies question the validity of the notion of imagined communities particularly in the context of countries such as India and those in Africa or Latin America that have colonial legacies or otherwise diverging paths towards the development of a nation state. Such studies posit that nationalism and the idea of a ‘modular national society’ are largely Western constructs—one that emerged through processes of colonialism that suppressed the institutions and political spirit of the colonised and in this sense, ‘imagined communities’ are also examples of ‘colonised imaginations’ (see for instance Chatterjee, 1991; Go & Watson, 2019; Itzigsohn & vom Hau, 2006). Recent studies (for example Cowan, 2021) have argued that communities (such as nations) do not exist out of nothing, but rather they emerge through human capacities to interact, communicate, and imagine with one another, and the emergence and subsequent roles played by new forms of media (such as the social media and indeed the internet) in creating new communities is critical.

3.2.3.2 Communities and Place

Another prominent school of thought links communities to place and geography. The earliest strand of literature examining the notion of community through a place-based lens is from the work of Tönnies and Loomis (1957) who coined the term ‘gemeinschaft’ for closely knit and intimate social relations bounded in a well-defined geographical space. This work together with that of Durkheim (1964) established the notion that communities are normatively a good thing, and that societal breakdown occurs because of the breakdown of these units. Lee and Newby (1983) typified communities into locality-based communities (where the commonality is limited to shared physical spaces), local social systems (based on the interactions between individuals), and communion (where individuals have a shared sense of identity). Subsequent literature has highlighted the importance of focusing the communal identity around familiar geographical features, cultural landmarks, or familial connections especially in the context of their roles in facilitating interactions between individuals (Hargreaves, 2004; Nash & Christie, 2003; Robertson et al., 2008).

Such discourses create an imagination of the community as being bounded by their proximity to and commonality in interactions with specific geographies—for example around sites of environmental contamination (Edelstein & Edelman, 1988), or around landscapes of ruination, decline, or deprivation (Mah, 2012). It brings to light tensions around whose sense of place are we engaging with and what claims to place are included or excluded in these narratives (Cameron, 2003; Harrington et al., 2008). Several strands of literature we have examined do not explicitly define what they mean by the term community. The word may be used to refer to individuals who do not participate in or are excluded from development, nationalistic or place-based narratives (for instance see Skerrat & Steiner, 2013). This perspective challenges the normatively held notion that one of the prerequisites to identify functioning communities is a healthy degree of participation (Gilchrist, 2009). It further implies that the formation of a community does not require action, but that individuals can be cohesively bounded through their inaction (communities of inaction) or conversely that action of some form (such as community-led efforts or developmental initiatives) has the potential to form new ‘communities of exclusion’. Stratford et al. (2003) further note that local places can fall victim to barriers restraining the objectives of community development—for instance elitism or parochialism, while at the same time paying insufficient attention to complexities such as intersecting community memberships or vulnerabilities (Smith, 2004). They can act as boundary making processes that both separate as well as divide people and places based on geographic nearness (Blomquist & Schlager, 2005; Harrington et al., 2008).

3.2.3.3 Communities as Partnerships with a Shared Objective

A third strand of literature where communities take centre stage is the discourse on collective action, management of the commons, and co-production. Communities here are defined as having a few shared characteristics—a degree of stability through regular or semi-regular interactions between members on several fronts, relationships that are largely not state-mediated, and who share beliefs and preferences that go beyond the problem requiring collective action (Flora, 1998; Ostrom, 1990; Taylor & Singleton, 1993). The distinction here, however, is that inclusion in such communities does not necessarily involve strong feelings (including altruistic ones) among members of the group (Flora, 1998). Such communities are described as being a sort of social infrastructure that differ along different geographies as well as in their acceptance of different ideas or people (Flora, 1998)—differences that affect their ability to make decisions that eventually benefit developmental goals (Wilkinson, 1991). Conflict management strategies are therefore considered essential prerequisites of interactions within such communities (Ostrom, 1990). Further, literature emerging from here explicitly highlights the challenges and trade-offs between communities and the state—for example drawing attention to the limits of community capacities and ability for decision making (Singleton, 2000). In so doing it points to the importance of institutional arrangements that strike a balance between state and community objectives (Cox et al., 2010; Singleton, 2000; Unnikrishnan et al., 2023).

This school of thought centres ideas of differences between communities—there is recognition of the fact that communities can be composed of different sub-groups, each with equally divergent capacities to act (Shucksmith, 2000). They are further defined through heterogeneities in their perceptions, resources, influence, as well as interests in engaging with the collective action problem (Crona & Bodin, 2006). While the recognition of this diversity is clear within this literature, there is debate on whether this kind of heterogeneity is beneficial in achieving the goals of developmental or community-led initiatives. For example, the design principles for collective action emerging from within the Bloomington school of institutional thought (Cox et al., 2010; Ostrom, 1990) imply that heterogeneities within communities might indeed pose barriers to collective action. Conversely, Newman and Dale (2005) argue that while heterogeneity might seem counterproductive in the initial stages of a project, it might indeed be a key towards increasing the adaptive capacity and resilience of these groups to external shocks. Recognition of intra-community heterogeneities is however limited within discussions emerging from this standpoint.

Literature emerging here underscores the notion of temporality in the process of community formation—studies have demonstrated processes of community formation are non-linear and may depend largely on everyday interactions between individuals in contrast to the prescriptions posited by development practitioners and policy analysts (Khotari, 2001).

3.3 Challenges and Limitations on Building Communities

The notion of community brings with it a particular contradiction—how do we bring different people together across barriers posed by differences between individuals in ways that address systemic inequalities (Rosenfeld & Duchin, 2022)? In the words of Staeheli (2008), communities can risk the “construction of sameness, rather than a recognition of what is common”—it can totalise instead of being constituted through sharing the dynamicities of communities—the notion that communities can be lost from its original environment (village or local neighbourhood), and regained through shared space, ideologies, and values (Driskell & Lyon, 2002). Rather communities progress from one state of being into another (Driskell & Lyon, 2002). Why does community matter?

The question of how people come together in a place and why has many answers, yet these explanations are not always explicitly or consciously articulated (Rosenfeld & Duchin, 2022). Further conflicts can arise at the intersection of different kinds of communities causing what has been termed community risk (Duane, 1997; Taarup-Esbensen, 2019). For instance, Taarup-Esbensen, in documenting the community relations negotiated by mining communities, describes how communities of place (described as people living near the mine and who are directly affected by it) intersect with communities of interest (defined as people outside of the place who either support or oppose the activity) in either cooperative or conflictual ways thus influencing broader narratives about the activity in general. In the next section we further problematise these notions of community by taking each of the types of “community” we described in the previous section and elucidating the politics of inclusion in those contexts.

In Sects. 3.1 and 3.2 we presented how the idea of “community” varies according to the purpose and motivations for which they have been formed. We now discuss the politics of inclusion within “communities” using the examples presented earlier. For each kind of community, we discuss the conditions for inclusion and conversely the boundaries on inclusion placed by those conceptualisations of the term community.

As may be seen in Table 3.1, each framing of the term community carries with it implicit assumptions about what constitutes belongingness as well as the boundaries associated with belonging. Paying attention to these distinctions can help shed light on groups that get excluded within each framing of the notion, thereby allowing for community-led initiatives to incorporate better notions of equity and justice in their activities. For instance, it may be seen that each of these framings of community serves to homogenise individuals in different ways—whether they be through imagining a shared common identity or establishing partnerships for a fixed and defined purpose. Indeed, literature that focuses on collective action goes a step further in stating that heterogeneity may in fact hinder successful collectives in forming (Cox et al., 2010; Ostrom, 2005) and operating efficiently. In so doing, they explicitly tend to exclude those individuals who do not conform to these shared ideals and imaginaries creating deep implications for society at multiple scales (for instance creating politically divided societies, or unequal benefits reaped by different actors through community-led initiatives like energy).

Table 3.1 The politics of community
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3.4 “Community” as Operationalised in Policy Reports

While scholarly literature has posited several framings of the term “community”, the term has become an important buzzword in many policy fora across diverse sectors. Communities are seen as lynchpins towards successful governance—particularly with regard to their abilities to engage with decentralised infrastructure provisioning or its monitoring. Communities are posited as being critical in developing a region’s adaptive capacity to shocks and vulnerabilities, thereby increasing its social and ecological resilience. At the same time, each of these policies varies in terms of what constitutes a community—in many cases the community itself remains undefined. This is particularly true within policy framings of community energy—a concept that has gained considerable traction within the Western world, and whose practices have spilled over into major international development agendas (such as the Overseas Development Aid funds).

3.4.1 Policy Landscapes of Community Energy

A comparative analysis of key reports on community energy helps situate the notion of community within community energy and the key challenges they raise (Table 3.2). The reports include a selection of policy documents that attempt to support the role of community energy in the energy transition.

Table 3.2 Policy framings of “community” in community energy
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The analysis in Table 3.2 shows that the idea of community is central to policy briefs developed around community energy and energy transitions in general. Communities are seen as central towards advancing the energy transition in decentralised ways that build capacity while at the same time drawing multiple benefits from such projects. At the same time, despite the multiple mentions of the term in each policy brief we have reviewed, there is a surprising lack of clarity on what “community” within community energy systems means. Communities are very rarely defined for the purposes of each report, and often represent a buzzword that drives the report’s agenda forward. Another interesting observation we made through this review was that while communities are expected to self-organise (with or without the presence of intermediary agencies) in the context of community energy systems, little attention is paid to how those communities self-organise—and what their criteria for inclusion are. In other words, there is little scrutiny of internal heterogeneities within groups of individuals coming together for a project and community thus becomes a monolithic and homogeneous concept, externally and ironically imposed by entities to describe a group of individuals participating in the community energy landscape. This framing of the community masks any intersectional vulnerabilities or strengths possessed by the group as well as the loci of power as centred around these groups. However, as several strands of literature have shown, it is important to centre these differences within the community to achieve the goals of justice and equity within energy transitions and to minimise exclusionary practices or the perpetuation of systemic forms of oppression within such initiatives. We therefore recommend that policy begins to pay greater attention to the dynamics of “community” within community energy systems as they have important implications for the delivery of regional and national energy milestones across the globe.

3.5 Lessons for Community Energy

Lazdins et al. (2021) state that energy communities collectivise diverse energy-related actions (like generation, distribution, storage, and pricing) through the agency of local members or stakeholders, thus decentralising the processes of decision making in energy landscapes. In recounting the barriers posed to community energy systems the paper goes on to argue that energy communities face a particular challenge through socio-cultural, political, and organisational means—especially a lack of experience in setting up communities. The implication here is that communities can be artificially created around energy needs with or without external intervention—a notion that stands in contrast to realities on ground that have been enumerated earlier. In developing a multiplayer game for decision making within energy communities, Brakovska et al. (2023) define them as “associations voluntarily established by citizens with a common interest in implementing energy efficiency measures and introducing renewable energy sources to reduce their consumption, and energy costs, and increase self-sufficiency”.

In a review of business models associated with energy communities, Iazzolino et al. (2022) note that the meaning of the term ‘energy community’ is variable, involving diverse configurations, actors, technologies, and complexities of infrastructural management. However, they note that energy communities are associated with the joint involvement of citizen groups, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and community organisations towards investments they make in the production, distribution, and sale of renewable energy (Iazzolino et al., 2022). The paper further identifies specific challenges associated with community involvement in such projects—their awareness of their own roles in the energy landscape, the propensity of community members to act as passive consumers, their willingness to pay extra for locally produced renewable energy, a lack of access to energy, trade-offs between energy efficiency and the ideals of prestigious and comfortable lifestyles, cost–benefit issues between investors and beneficiaries, energy poverty, and the high capital investment required to finance these initiatives.

In essence energy communities are described as a particular kind of community of interest that has emerged around shared concerns around energy access and appropriation, while challenging dominant discourses of centralised energy production (Helm & Mier, 2019). Literature focuses on the formation of energy communities as being a key movement in driving energy transitions especially in Europe and Australia at least since the 1970s (Iazzolino et al., 2022). Communities are externally defined entities that coalesce around the shared objective of delivering the promise of energy transitions. However, what communities consist of remains vague.

3.6 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have provided a dynamic perspective on the idea of community as operationalised within the community energy sector. To do so, we first expanded on what community has come to signify across diverse strands of literature and the kinds of communities so described. We reflected on the implicit criteria for belonging to these different kinds of communities before examining how the concept of community is operationalised within the burgeoning discourse around community energy systems. As our analysis shows, each conceptualisation of the term community carries with it implicit assumptions about who is included and conversely who gets excluded within them. Our review further noted that while the term has been employed extensively across policy and academic discourses, there is very little clarity as to what the term means on ground in such projects. There is very little engagement with what constitutes a community, what the criteria for belonging to an energy community are, and conversely who do community energy projects thus exclude. Community energy systems in practice and across policy are largely conceptualised as communities of interest operating around a business model of energy infrastructure which can exclude those individuals who either cannot participate in the project or who do not have the means to invest in it. Given that community energy projects are seen as integral to achieving universal energy access especially in energy poor regions of the globe, such framings of community energy projects can in practice implicitly reinforce systemic forms of exclusion. While in practice, communities are expected to self-organise towards developing and consuming community energy infrastructure, their boundaries are often imposed by external entities (such as intermediary organisations, the state, academic researchers, or a funding mandate) in ways that homogenise diverse individuals into either a community of place or interest. These boundaries are reflective largely of the actor/s imposing the boundary but in practice can mask differences in energy access emerging from differential power equations, systemic practices of oppression resulting from class, caste, or gendered dynamics existing within and across such groups of individuals (see, for instance, Kumar & Aiken, 2020). Further, the contrasting perspectives of policy reports and the specific cases suggest that there is a more utopian perspective on community energy in policy, perhaps because the difficulties of applying it in practice are not always evident. Yet, we argue that greater attention needs to be paid to these dynamics of practice as they have important implications towards delivering sustainable and equitable energy transitions across the globe.