Successful factors of the European Union Renewable Energy Communities: an overview

In line with the international environmental policies, the European Commission issued in 2019 the Green Deal, a strategy for making Europe climate- neutral by 2050, through the shift from fossil to renewable energy sources (RES). Besides, the recent geopolitical dynamics have highlighted a growing need to review and overcome traditional energy supply models, focusing mostly on innovative ones based on RES self-production and energy consumption, i.e., renewable energy communities (RECs). These are new forms of community entrepreneurship in the energy sector, based on a social innovation approach able to promote a democracy process to ensure environmental and economic benefits to the whole community by directly involving their citizens. Thus, their implementation may represent specifically an opportunity for the development of inner areas, territories characterized by many socio-economic problems. Indeed, the Italian Recovery Plan, through the Mission 2.C.2, has allocated almost EUR 2.20 billion to increase the RECs’ realization, mainly for municipalities with fewer than 5000 inhabitants, typically located in rural areas. In this perspective, the present paper provides an overview of the critical successful factors of the existing renewable energy communities in the European Union. To do this, the authors conducted a systematic literature review, using Scopus and the PRISMA diagram that has included, among the 315 articles identified, 80 studies according to authors’ criteria. The results could be useful information for policy makers to identify which RECs’ structure, replicable and scalable, best suits the Italian rural areas and specifically the inner ones.