How municipalities support energy cooperatives: survey results from Germany and Switzerland

Autor: Benjamin Schmid, Irmi Seidl, Thomas Meister, Britta Klagge
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
020209 energy
Energy (esotericism)
lcsh:TJ807-830
lcsh:Renewable energy sources
Energy Engineering and Power Technology
Context (language use)
02 engineering and technology
Municipal support
Community energy
010501 environmental sciences
Development
lcsh:HD9502-9502.5
7. Clean energy
01 natural sciences
Energy policy
Germany
11. Sustainability
0202 electrical engineering
electronic engineering
information engineering
Limiting factors
Energy cooperatives
Survey results
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Sustainable development
Public economics
Renewable Energy
Sustainability and the Environment
business.industry
National energy policy
lcsh:Energy industries. Energy policy. Fuel trade
Renewable energy
13. Climate action
Distributed generation
Survey data collection
Original Article
business
Switzerland
Diversity (business)
Zdroj: Energy, Sustainability and Society, Vol 10, Iss 1, Pp 1-20 (2020)
Energy, Sustainability and Society
ISSN: 2192-0567
DOI: 10.1186/s13705-020-00248-3
Popis: Background Energy cooperatives are a prominent and common form of community energy. Community energy has the potential to increase actor diversity and local acceptance of renewable energies and has therefore been highlighted to be conducive to energy transitions. While research has recognized the importance of both the national and the local governance levels for community energy, it remains unclear how these two levels are related. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates how municipalities support energy cooperatives at the local level and how this support is related to national context conditions. Methods The study takes a quantitative approach using own survey data from Germany and Switzerland. Based on a typology of municipal support, we compare limiting factors and municipal support for energy cooperatives between the two countries as well as between energy cooperatives with and without municipal membership. By means of this two-tiered comparison, we analyze how municipal support is related to national contexts, specifically regarding national energy policies, and to municipal involvement in the cooperatives. Results Our analysis shows that municipal support can benefit energy cooperatives as it addresses some of the major limiting factors for energy cooperatives in Germany and Switzerland. However, our data suggest that municipalities only specifically address cooperatives’ limitations with support measures if they are a member in the cooperative. This indicates that organizational involvement of a municipality in energy cooperatives leads to a more targeted support compared to non-members and thus is beneficial to meet the specific cooperatives’ challenges due to national energy policy. Conclusions Cooperatives can benefit from municipal support, especially if the municipality is a cooperative member. Municipal support is likely to become even more important for energy cooperatives in the future, due to reduced national support for renewable energies in Germany and Switzerland. On their part, municipalities can benefit from collaborating with energy cooperatives, as they gain an additional instrument to implement municipal energy policy. Hence, supporting and seeking membership in energy cooperatives appear to be adequate strategies for municipalities to foster a decentralized energy transition.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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