3.3.2. Information and Knowledge

It is crucial for the fitness of energy communities, that the relevant actors acquire the necessary knowledge to make decisions [46]. Many of the more practical barriers or failure scenarios can be traced back to lack of knowledge, and given the horizontal nature of energy communities, this knowledge is highly heterogeneous (Table 3). Proposals often overshoot natural or physical possibilities, factors such as sun, biomass, wind availability or proximity to sea, impacts of climate change, building conditions, settlement layout may contradict expectations if not thoroughly understood [44]. It is generally an obstacle that the multiple impacts and broader societal implications of energy communities are only conceptualized, but not sufficiently specified, quantified, measured [33], hindering not only recruitment, but also normative alignment (ref former [2]). Support from policymakers is an essential

enabler, but only if communities can convince how their projects fit to relevant targets [40]. Research on the impacts of CRE projects are based on interviews, surveys in costly and highly specific case studies, model-based assessments are limited to regional-scale econometric analyses [12]. Apart from the public sector, prospective members themselves are rarely aware of how local energy systems work, what are the potentials for community energy, or the necessity of sustainable transition [3]. Community energy is simply not in the general discourse well enough to support the assimilation of project proposals [48], and even existing communities miss out on involving support by not understanding and communicating the distributional aspects of their projects, and how a certain stakeholder is specifically affected by it [46]. It is also important to plan for how EC initiatives interact with other projects, when calculating impacts, as certain synergistic co-benefits might greenlight some otherwise unfeasible projects [55], and if other pre-existing societal problems force EC off the agenda [12,35]. Finally, information provision is linked to data scarcity, the fragmentation of data ownership, its fitness-for-purpose is often questionable, imposing significant work for data acquisition and pre-processing [44,87].


**Table 3.** Information and knowledge related progression factors.

## 3.3.3. Economic Influencers

Financing community energy projects is a recurring challenge in the literature (Table 4). Energy communities usually require both a heavy upfront investment for infrastructural interventions, and significant costs for operation [3,45,49]. Much of this is traceable back to high transaction costs, comprising of searching for stakeholders and supporters, bargaining and negotiation with actors, acquiring and disseminating relevant information, dispute settlement, monitoring and opportunity costs [34]. Meeting the legal entry barriers, connecting to the grid and entering wholesale market, and knowledge production in general are factors discussed earlier, but they are with financial implications [33]. On the other hand, financial benefits stem from the local production and trade of energy at a lower price, the pooled investment on energy conservation and efficiency measures, and selling flexibility services [42]. Many projects do not scale to the point to produce enough economic surplus to cover operational expenditures, and there is always a danger of growing "too big", losing the social cohesion that came from the direct relationships of the community [2]. There is much reliance on external incentives, the availability of favourable taxation, feed-in-tariff rates, subsidies, commercial investments and loans support projects directly [3,33,49], while providing a level playing field for

market actors, and easing access to information and crucial indirect tools to make community energy economically more viable [46,49].


**Table 4.** Economic influencer progression factors.
