Smart Energy Communities: Technical and Socio-Economic Perspectives towards Environmental Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

The smart energy community (SEC), in its broadest sense, can be defined as a set of energy end-users (citizens, small/medium enterprises, and local public authorities) that decide to make common choices to meet their energy needs with a sharing approach through distributed generation technologies. The enhancement in the use of renewable sources and the smart management of energy flows are part of the emerging paradigm of energy communities. SECs offer a means to restructure energy systems as they is mandated to “generate”, consume, store, sell, and, most importantly, share the “produced” energy within the community, with the aims to provide social and environmental benefits rather than focus just on economic profits. SECs are spreading all around the world due also to the intense regulatory frameworks on this topic as the Clean Energy for all Europeans package introduces the concept of SEC for the first time in European legislation. However, such a re-organization of energy systems poses different challenges and opportunities on various levels, as described next.

• Technical: SECs could bring the diffusion of high-efficiency multi-carriers’ energy systems (electricity, heating, cooling, and hydrogen), integrating different energy storages that are able to satisfy the community’s energy needs. Nevertheless, to support the implementation of such systems, great effort is needed in the area of information and communication technologies’ (ICT) innovations to allow for the interaction between smart grid infrastructures (electricity grids, district heating/cooling grids, and natural gas grids), aiming to identify the optimal synergies between them. Additionally, the main SECs’ energy and environmental targets can be achieved through intense research activity on the high-efficiency distributed energy systems activated by both fossil fuels and renewable energies.
• Social: Citizen-based democratic decision-making and participation in both energy matters and community co-ownership schemes play a key role in the raising of acceptance and diffusion of renewable energy technologies. Furthermore, collective energy projects can generate local investments and income, and keep economic/financial benefits from local resources within the community. SEC has the potential to address energy poverty by guaranteeing cuts in energy bills because of energy costs and by offering the opportunity to participate in SECs to socially vulnerable citizens. Nevertheless, more clarity is needed to define how these advantages are shared within the SECs, accounting for an adequate distribution gain amongst users.
• Economic: SECs’ members may benefit from economic gains related to energy costs. These can include a cut in their energy bill due to the renewable energy use and the income deriving from the selling of surplus energy. Other advantages may regard lower energy tariffs due to aggregation effects. However, a key challenge concerns defining how the local economic benefits for SEC’s members impact the cost-efficiency of the global energy system. For example, the expected advantages of reduced grid fees due to the reduction in power flows from the external power grid may transform into costs for end-users elsewhere in the power system.

In this context, the editors encourage all authors interested to submit their interdisciplinary contributions (research or review papers) aimed at investigating the opportunities of SECs and to overcome the aforementioned technical and socio-economic challenges by considering the role of SECs in the ongoing energy transition. Some specific themes include but are not limited to the following:

• Energy, economic, and environmental analysis of SECs’ case studies based on experimental or numerical investigations;
• Energy systems integration and the opportunities of multicarrier systems (heat, electricity, and hydrogen);
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) for the evaluation of SECs’ performance from technical, social, environmental, and economic perspectives;
• Potential of SECs in energy poverty reducing;
• Extension, revision, and application of policy and regulation framework;
• Economic aspects and incentive schemes for SECs;
• Impact of SECs on the power grid; and
• Optimization and smart management of energy systems within SEC.

Dr. Elisa Marrasso
Prof. Dr. Maurizio Sasso
Prof. Dr. Andrea Lanzini
Dr. Francesca Ceglia
Dr. Ana Picallo-Perez
Prof. Dr. Paolo Esposito
Guest Editors

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• smart energy community
• energy transition
• sustainability
• social acceptance
• economic challenges
• energy efficiency
• renewable energy
• energy poverty
• ITC innovations