Policy Database: Collection of Public Policies for Energy Communities

According to the recast Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), member states (MS) of the European Union (EU) are supposed to take out assessments of barriers for and potential of renewable energy communities in their countries (RED II, Art. 22 Para. 3). The European legislator has not specified this provision, i.e. the content and form of these assessments has not been clarified (yet). It is only clear from the legal text that these assessments should be the basis of the “enabling framework” (RED II, Art. 22 Para. 4) that EU MS shall provide. The project aims at developing a template for the assessments.

The assessment shall provide the basis for setting up an "enabling framework", making sure that energy communities can play a role in the energy transition in each of the EU MS. Ideally, the selection of public measures builds on a collection of policies and their impacts. We call this the "policy database" and make some suggestions of how to structure, set up and operate such a database.

This background paper is part of a study on a model assessment of potential and barriers to the development of renewable energy communities at the national level, commissioned by REScoop.eu.