Energy communities: how they are developing and the many challenges facing the sector

In addition to the figures shared by the GSE, must be added the projects supported by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which have funded around 1.8 gigawatts of new capacity, with non-repayable grants of up to 40 per cent for municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, and which are due to come online progressively. Even taking this contribution into account, however, Italia is still some way off the final target set for 2027, though the volume of projects currently under development suggests there is scope for catching up.

“The NRRP has provided a significant boost, but it was an exceptional measure,” comments Pizzuti. “If we really want to consolidate the energy community model, we need structural tools, not temporary measures. We are beginning to consider new models that highlight not only the economic benefits, but also the environmental and social ones, and that enable end customers to play an active role in participating in energy markets, but this is a process still under development.”

The feed-in tariff for shared energy expires on 31 December 2027 and, without new support measures, there is a risk that the market will slow down. The issue of credit is also a concern: by their statutes, CERs are established as non-profit organisations, which effectively makes them unbankable according to traditional criteria. Another aspect that should not be underestimated is the time involved: connecting a new plant to the grid takes, on average, between 300 and 400 days. Given the 2027 deadline, it is necessary to speed up all processes if growth is to continue.

The spread of CERs across the country has also been slowed down by complications that arose during the implementation phase. Katiuscia Eroe, Legambiente’s Head of Energy, emphasises this: ‘There was great enthusiasm on the part of citizens, businesses, local authorities and the third sector, and this desire to participate is still there. The problem is not a lack of interest, but the complications that have arisen during the implementation phase.”

One of the main obstacles has been the bureaucratic complexity itself: from the difficulty in accessing the PNRR calls for proposals to the procedures for registering and amending community details on the GSE platform, right through to the lengthy administrative processes required to manage the admission of new members or the installation of new systems. “Energy communities were meant to be accessible to everyone, from large companies to ordinary citizens wishing to carry out a small local project. The bureaucracy has often failed to meet this need for simplicity,” comments Eroe.

Among the outstanding issues is the so-called ‘separate billing’: at present, members of energy communities continue to pay their bills just like any other customer, subsequently receiving incentives linked to shared energy. ‘This means that the economic benefits of energy communities are not being maximised. Anyone with a rooftop solar panel system sees their bill reduced immediately through self-consumption, whereas this mechanism does not yet exist within energy communities,’ says Eroe. ‘Another critical issue concerns the restriction of incentives almost exclusively to solar power. We’re talking about renewable energy communities, so they should be able to make the most of all available technologies, from wind power to hydroelectricity and bioenergy. Focusing solely on solar power means failing to fully exploit the characteristics of the local areas.”

For Legambiente, the future of CERs also depends on opening up to the heating sector, which is currently still excluded from the regulatory debate. “Heating accounts for the largest share of many households’ energy expenditure. Developing district heating energy communities would represent a further step forward, capable of generating even greater economic benefits,” concludes the association’s Head of Energy.