Multi-Level Governance and Empowerment of Energy Communities: Comparing the cases of Italy and the Netherlands

The recent broader interest in reducing GHG emissions while supporting bottom-up initiatives has led to an increased number of Energy Communities. Those are citizen-led energy initiatives, flourishing across all of Europe as a decentralized way of energy production. Moreover, they have been acknowledged as social innovations, too. ECs enhance the spread of other transitions, not only the energy one, e.g., car-sharing services, EVs, and initiatives against energy poverty. However, an energy community, even though is now acknowledged as a legal entity by the European Union and by local governments, is still facing barriers that are hindering its full deployment. According to the academic literature, those barriers concern, for instance, the lack of a factual regulatory framework, absence of intermediaries, and new business models. Moreover, ECs have not been analyzed through the Multi-Level Governance, specifically on how institutional setting and governance can influence the emergence of these initiatives and support their spread. This Multi-Level Governance implies the study of the stakeholders’ interaction among different levels, EU, national and sub-national, until the local level. This multi-level approach was acknowledged in the literature as relevant when examining energy and climate policies, also due to the importance which is recognized in those topics of the local and regional levels. Thus, the use of this framework for further analysis can provide clarity concerning the different responsibilities of local, national, and international actors, as well as intermediaries, and support the identification of additional barriers which has not been highlighted yet. This research, hence, aims to formulate a policy advice on how to strengthen the flourishing process of these citizen-led initiatives by assessing it through the Multi-Level Governance framework.Engineering and Policy Analysi