Energy Communities - Video Overview

This recent video provides a really good overview towards the concept of Community Renewable Energy (CRE) initiatives, highlighting how it's a disruptive market construction created to provide more power (double entendre) and transparency to consumers than the grid-based fossil-fuel burning systems we largely have in place today. I largely appreciate its discussion on the creation/inclusion of energy communities; that the members "feel like pioneers, frontrunners of the green transition". Because they establish a social value on breaking away from the energy norms, CREs can create a community and a meaning that transcends just its utilitarian purpose as an energy disruptor - it takes on a life of its own, establishing social ties and interpersonal relationships that further perpetuate CREs themselves. However, the discussion of an "independent actor" coming in to establish the technical systems of a CRE I hold a degree of umbridge towards; if they require outside assistance in order to mend and maintain the energy systems themselves, then they're still held under the thumb of those outside of the community itself if things go awry. This is an issue seen when creating energy systems in developing areas, in which they fail in a handful of years and require outsourcing (and the problems that come with that) to ensure repairs. Either way, the video provides a valuable overview and discussion of CREs, its benefits, some pitfalls, and how the EU is attempting to make this type of initiative more normalized across their member states.