**5. Conclusions**

The study explored the potential role of urban building energy modelling in enabling the research and planning of energy communities. The conceptual framework of strategic niche management in the transition theory discourse was amended by the notion of affordances, to provide the missing link for studying technology as a trigger for social innovations. The literature on energy community was probed to reveal the diverse use-cases, general lifecycle and progression factors encompassing enablers, conditions and barriers of energy communities. The literature on urban building energy modelling was

investigated to identify tool capabilities that afford specific progression factors. The study revealed that as an early-stage decision- and design-support tool, UBEM is a potential technological trigger to support kickstarting energy communities.

Energy communities are promising social instruments to invest in accessible, clean energy sources, system-level energy efficiency and offer a bottom-up path to low-carbon urban energy systems. This study unveiled UBEM as technological instruments for energy communities. As a step in the convergence of engineering and socio-technical discourses, it contributes to the task of transition studies of bridging social and technological innovations for a low-carbon future.

**Supplementary Materials:** Python-based in-house data science module "padron" was used for agglomerative hierarchical clustering and visualizations. The specific code used is available online at https://github.com/bvabud/Project\_Ence, Agglomerative clustering notebook for progression factors: ec\_progression\_factor\_classification\_CODE, Agglomerative clustering notebook for UBEM tools: ubem\_tool\_classification\_CODE.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, V.B., Á.M. and A.R.; methodology, V.B.; formal analysis, V.B., Á.M. and M.K.B.; investigation, V.B., Á.M., M.K.B. and K.P.; data curation, V.B., Á.M. and M.K.B.; writing—original draft preparation, V.B., Á.M., M.K.B. and K.P.; writing—review and editing, V.B., Á.M. and A.R.; visualization, V.B.; supervision, A.R.; All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to acknowledge the support to facilitate the research provided by the University of Pécs, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology within the framework of the Biomedical Engineering Project of the Thematic Excellence Programme 2019 (TUDFO/51757-1/2019-ITM and the Advanced Building and Urban Design.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.


**Table A1.** Energy community progression factors.

**Appendix**

 **A**

*Energies* **2020**, *13*, 2274


**Table A1.** *Cont*.

*Energies* **2020**, *13*, 2274


**A2.**SummaryofUBEMandUSEM

**Appendix** 

**B**


**Table A2.** *Cont*.
