The Concept of Energy Communities as per the Clean Energy for All Europeans Package: Contribution to the Energy Transition in France

The climate change crisis has brought into sharper focus the critical role of energy consumers in the elaboration and implementation of national energy policies, as well as of their involvement in the energy transition at the territorial level. The introduction of new categories of citizen energy initiatives, such as “Renewable Energy Communities” and “Citizen Energy Communities,” giving the public the right to produce, consume, store, and sell renewable energy, can be seen as the prototypical governance model of an emerging form of energy systems. This chapter aims to analyze, from a conceptual point of view, the role of the public in these new participatory modalities, and the potential challenges for their implementation. In doing so, it intends to contribute to the general discussion on energy decentralization in France. Although local initiatives are preferable and even favored in the context of France’s energy transition to meet the growing demand for renewable energy from local sources, remaining regulatory barriers related, inter alia, to maintaining security of supply and the lack of incentive instruments (adapted feed-in tariff, tax, and grid connection cost exemption) accentuate the recourse to a much more centralized legal-political framework.