3.3.5. Requirements for Justice

Justice, especially procedural justice is heavily featured in the discourse of transition management (Table 6). Sound institutional design, providing democratic legitimacy within energy communities is still a challenge [49]. As a result of the phrase "community", it is easy to believe the model is inherently positive, and more involvement is socially empowering, but there must be safeguards to assess and enforce legitimacy. Input legitimacy is measured on who is included in decision-making—or the community itself—which is where governance network models can be misleading: they might report high participation, but might exclude certain actors simply because they were out of reach from the social networks used for recruitment [12]. Failures in input legitimacy might lead to already powerful actors driving community energy, deepening existing conflicts and demotivating people not just from participating in community energy, but other governance network-based initiatives [35]. Throughput legitimacy, on the other hand, refers to the role each actor has in decision-making, and governance network negotiations do tend to give asymmetrical powers to those with more resources [42]. In case of peer-to-peer markets, this could lead to exacerbating energy poverty among the economically disadvantaged [53]. However it is the strength of networked governance that it provides an arena for discussions on issues of relevance, a core value incentivising membership, which must supplemented by instruments to monitor and supress exploitative conduct both within the communities, and on the markets [40]. Finally, output legitimacy in energy communities is expected to be sound, due to broad decision-ownership, however the way decisions are reached can be opaque under layers of negotiations, and any measure of transparency improves the community output legitimacy [42].


#### 3.3.6. Actor-Bound Drivers and Criteria

Actor-bound drivers and criteria are factors describing the people who support, oppose or disengage from EC projects (Table 7). All three groups can influence the success of projects. Opponents are those who actively resists community energy, whether because of legitimate concerns, such as unwillingness to pay the opportunity cost, or through bounded rationality, which may surface as resistance towards either environmentalism, community ownership, or collective actions [35,105]. It is a matter of providing input legitimacy to give voice to concerns, provide mutually agreeable evidence to negate unwarranted opposition, and a just consensus and compensation mechanism for legitimate opposition. Other actors, who are passive, but should be supportive, might also be driven by bounded rationality, by inertia—disengagement despite the known benefits due to perceived discomfort of change [2,53], by lack of interest in energy-related issues [43], or by a wait-and-see attitude [2]. While opponents and bystanders influence mainly the initiation of projects, rebound effects are threats post interventions. Physical interventions without behaviour change results in net increase of energy consumption, hindering wider societal impacts of the EC [12]. In all cases, having community energy up on the agenda in both the political and in social discourse and placing it in the specific reality and value models are key conditions in overcoming passive, rebound and resistant behaviour.



The self-identity of actors, attitudes and individual motivations, such as concern for environment, or grassroots enthusiasm may promote membership [42]. In multiple cases support for renewables and for divesting from coal, nuclear produces more engaged change-agents than individual economic benefits [105]. These change-agents, single or multiple committed evangelists for the cause, have been critical for most energy communities, as they usually mobilize their social networks, seek out professional expertise and lobby for political and financial support voluntarily in their free times [2,12]. This however bars potential energy communities that do not have change-agents, or they do not have the time or social capital to succeed. There is also great potential in intermediaries who may trigger knowledge diffusion, improve the accessibility of the community to supportive networks and resources, but is an additional cost in an already strained business model [12]. However, community-led projects, with more opportunities to distribute responsibilities, and assign roles to individuals fare better in terms of multiple benefits capturing than outsourced, or commercial-led projects [12,45,105].
