Community Energy in the United Kingdom:beyond or between the Market and the State?

Abstract

The British energy policy regime is commonly depicted as large-scale, centrally-planned and private-sector led sector with limited citizen involvement into energy planning and development. However, the number of electricity generation projects owned by community groups has risen dramatically over the last decade. The development of such initiatives raises a key question related to public services provision and market organisation: does community energy constitute an alternative beyond market and State arrangements? Based on semi-structured interviews and extensive policy analysis, this article provides a twofold answer to that question. First, it shows that community energy in the United Kingdom constitutes an alternative model to market and State arrangements with the opening of three possibilities: ownership of energy infrastructures by local community groups, participation with higher levels of citizen involvement and economic benefits with profits made from electricity generation distributed within local areas. Second, the article shows that the transformative power of this model is limited because community energy is embedded between the State and the market. This embeddedness is characterised by the fact that community energy organisations struggle to institutionalise advantages and to challenge decisions that affect them negatively, and by a corrective role with a provision of several services that were previously provided by State and market actors.

Keywords

• political economy
• public policies
• community energy
• renewable energy