Who Delivers on the Promise of Community Energy? Evaluating Niche–Regime Interactions in Swedish Energy Communities

With the European Green Deal and Clean Energy for All Europeans package, the phenomenon of energy communities (ECs; alternatively, community energy) has gained increasing attention within the energy transition. At the same time, the liberalization of the electricity sector, drive towards economy-wide electrification, and key technological developments have created unique opportunities for both new entrants and incumbents as well as challenges to the status quo. Thus, a once niche phenomenon driven by local communities has gained the notice of these actors, who have become more and more engaged in various forms of community-level energy systems. While the emerging diversity of such systems has begun to be acknowledged, there remains a tendency in both academia and the public sector to adopt an “ideal” conception of energy communities (Bergek & Palm, 2024). Failure to reflect this emerging reality of course has critical implications for their regulation. At the same time, research has already highlighted critical questions about energy communities’ ability to address issues of democracy and justice—aspects often associated with the EC ideal. In addition to these questions, the role of ECs within the broader transformation of the grid remains underexplored, e.g. in terms of the value they provide to system operators (Blasch et al., 2021). Given the technical, organizational and resource demands involved, a question emerges as to what actors are best placed to achieve aims beyond economic goals and provide values beyond the respective local communities. This paper explores these questions through a survey of energy communities and interviews with industry actors involved in community energy initiatives in Sweden. The results have implications for the regulation of energy communities as well as the conceptualization of niche–regime interaction and issues of energy democracy and justice.