NEWCOMERS: Electricity consumption of members in a newly developed top-down energy community

Clean energy communities aim to promote renewable energy as well as energy conservation (Gui and MacGill, 2018; Mlinarič et al., 2019). They are social networks and often create a new social identity among their members. The identification as a member of an energy community can thereby lead to new environmentally friendly behaviours. Initial qualitative evidence indeed suggests that involvement in energy communities encourages sustainable energy behaviours (Biddau et al., 2016; Middlemiss, 2011). Based on survey data, Sloot et al. (2018) observe that being part of an energy community potentially enhances community members’ motivation to engage in energy conservation. Yet, none of these studies accounted for the self-selection of individuals into energy communities.
This study investigates to what extent the membership in an energy community induces energy conservation. It is the first study to explore this relationship in a randomized controlled field experiment, in which random assignment into the energy community allows for the estimation of the causal effect of community membership on electricity conservation. In our randomized controlled trial, we co-created the energy community in collaboration with GEN-I, the largest electricity utility in Slovenia.