“I’m not exaggerating- we might have 200 kilowatts of solar energy that we can ground tomorrow morning. It will all be ready, and we will only need to connect to the network. At present, however, to do so takes as much as six or seven months. Does this seem normal? There is the potential to reduce the consumption of ten condominiums to that of one, but bureaucracy devastates it. Think of the benefits, that are not solely environment”.
These are the words of Pietro Del Grosso, a mechanical engineer at Tecnozenith, a small company that supplies electric plants in the Italian province of Cuneo. One after the other, he considers the stakes involved and the long waits that are needed to realise projects of collective self-consumption in condominiums. These projects are based on renewable energy produced in a neutral point of a building (for example, the roof) and shared between the inhabitants.
Del Grosso works for one of many companies engulfed in bureaucratic malaise- which, more than anything else, is slowing the rise of clean energy in Italy. In the meantime, the country is reviving combustible fossils such as gas to confront the energy crisis unleashed by the Russian war in Ukraine.
According to an analysis by the Alliance for Solar Energy, the green energy projects blocked by bureaucracy and waiting for authorisation from the VIA (Commissione governativa sulla Valutazione di impatto ambientale, or Government Comission for the Evaluation of Environmental Impact) number more than 500.
Among them, there are dozens upon dozens of initiatives of collective self-consumption that, when they cross the confines of a single building, enter the definition of REC, or Renewable Energy Communities. In the latter case, it is the residents (though, necessarily, not all) of a suburb or municipality who make of themselves a “company” (creating a legal subject), entrust themselves to a supplier, and install renewable plants to be shared (often solar panels). The result is the distribution of the energy produced among all adherents, who then benefit from government incentives and savings on their bills. Production, exchange, and communal self-consumption of energy that does not impact upon the planet: a small revolution from below to halt the return of fossil fuels and activate a sustainable energy transition on all sides.
A triumphant return to Italy- the social benefits of energy communities
Collective self-consumption and energy communities are the two primary pillars of so-called energy democracy. Everyone contributes to the cause and everyone- including those who do not adhere and do not finance plants- derive benefits from it. Specifying “everyone” is essential because energy democracy understands citizenship as collective. Projects such as these can potentially put isolated towns and peripheral suburbs on the map, reinforce social links between citizens, and make a return and then some to the country. The benefits, therefore, are not solely environmental and economic, but also social. Thus, the projects have a threefold value, and stimulate social cohesion within the country and educate residents regarding a more ecologically friendly lifestyle.
“People are enthusiastic, they willingly associate with the projects, and they feel recognised. In our area, everyone adhered to them, apart from residents of second houses and foreigners who rarely come here”, says Laura Borsieri of the Electrical Consortium of Storo (Consorzio elettrico di Storo or CEDIS), in the Italian province of Trento, who manages the energy community in the alpine village of Riccomassimo: the first in the province. “Our renewable energy community can supply energy to roughly thirty individuals. And the citizens allocate income from the incentives of GSE (Editor’s Note: the Gestore dei servizi energetici or Energy Service Manger, the official body in Italy through which to register Renewable Energy Communities) to be reinvested in the region, to help maintain mountain pathways, complete public works, as a playground, and various social initiatives”.
How does it work? “All the houses are under the same distribution substation”, responds Borsieri. “And the solar energy plant of the energy community- from a peak of 18 kilowatts- has been built on the roofing of a former school that the municiapl administration placed at our disposal as a free loan for use. The village’s residents worked together in an associaction for social advancement”.
Delays due to the implementing decree and typical “Italian-style” bureaucracy
Riccomassimo is a virtuous but isolated example. Being a village of roughly fifty inhabitants, its energy community manages to produce concrete benefits regardless of the stakes of undertaking such an experiment.
Indeed, the current legislation imposes 200 kilowatts as the maximum installed power per plant. The Milleproroghe decree (an annual decree extending the lifetime of various Italian government measures) of 2019 launched a “test” phase, to be followed by an implementing decree that would increase the maximum power (it would allow the creation of energy communities up to a megawatt of power and stimulate Italy’s Municipalities with 2.2 billion euros from the Italian Government’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan), unblock pending projects and supply companies, citizens, and public entities essential information on how to proceed. An implementing decree that was expected first at the start of 2022, then in June, then immediately after summer, and was formalised only in the second half of November 2022 (as we write it has not yet been published), thus keeping hundreds of potentially invaluable initiatives in limbo in the full midst of an energy crisis.
“We are still in an experimental phase. It is very frustating- we expected to be working freely by this year. There are Municipalities and citizens who need to convert to solutions of this kind to amortise bills. It is unthinkable that our Government does not respond when there is truly a need, while in Northern Europe energy communities have existed for years”, says Claudia Carani of AESS (the Agenzia per lo sviluppo sostenibile or Agency for Sustainable Development), which supports various Italian Municipalities in the process of creating and activating energy communities. Being legal subjects, renewable energy communities cannot be created in the blink of an eye: citizens who adhere to them must create a non-profit association, finance the installation of plants (or entrust themselves to a third party, including for the creation of a plan of feasibility) and register themselves in the GSE’s portal- which can generate problems.
“When, in June 2021, I registered an energy community, the GSE’s website was still not finished. I managed to complete only the first part, and even now it doesn’t function 100%”, confesses Laura Borsieri in regards to her experience in Riccomassimo, in Trentino. At least three or four months can pass between registering in the GSE’s portal and having an application for an energy community approved. “But before getting to that point, you need to be connected to the network, a process that takes further months”, adds Del Grosso.
According to a report by Legambiente, updated at the end of October 2022, only 16 out of 44 energy communities analysed managed to complete the passage to approval on the GSE’s website, and only three received the first tranche of government incentives. “The GSE has guidelines that restrict the operability of renewable energy communities. And other bodies come into play, such as the Revenue Agency, which establishes a series of fiscal rules regarding them, and the Italian Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and Environment (Editor’s note: also known as ARERA) can regulate them too”, adds Carani. “There are too many entities that can define additional regulatroy blocks. It becomes a Chinese box. Indeed, the European Commission has requested that Italy simplify the process”.
Those who have already begun, and those chomping at the bit: the examples of Bologna and Pinerolo
In Italy, the renewable energy communities mapped by Legambiente number more than 100, but those that effectively operate- being in the official Renewable Communities portal– less than 50. Compared to governments in Northern Europe, the Italian government does not hold up: a report by the Joint research centre counted more than 1,750 energy communities in Germany, 700 in Denmark, and 500 in the Netherlands.
The European Union wants to eventually produce 20% of Europe’s electricty thanks to REC. According to the
Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (or ENEA), within 2050 there will be more than 264 million EU citizens who have joined the energy market as a “prosumer” (someone who finances the installation of an energy community’s plant), thereby generating up to 45% of total green energy in Europe. The publication of the implementing decree, with the consequent regional tenders to obtain funding, may represent a turning point for Italy: just think that, according to the regional councilor for ecological transition Roberta Lombardi, the 500 quota has been exceeded in Lazio « total memberships» collected online.
The chains that keep numerous projects harnessed could therefore be broken- such as those of a conceived project based on the installation of a solar energy plant in the office of the Opera dell’immacolata onlus (or OPIMM) in Bologna. This project aims to produce energy and share it between roughly seventy family households in the Bologna suburbs of Roveri and Pilastro.
“In April 2022, we indicated our availability to begin the project: our office, with its large roof of 2,500 sqared metres, is physically desirable to host a plant capable of both providing energy to Pilastro and satisfying our energy needs”, explains Cira Solimene, director of the OPIMM Onlus foundation, that put itself forward to become the nucleus of an initiative aiming to reduce energy poverty and inequality in the two peripheral suburbs in Bologna. “Then everything stopped, because we’re still waiting for the necessary implementing decrees and regional decree. They got in touch with us again after summer to tell us it was about to happen, but nothing has. We don’t have the means to proceed”.
The goal is “to also include schools, parishes, companies within energy communities. We want to create cohesion and a feeling of participation”,
adds Solimene. “But, I repeat, we still don’t know anything. We’re even ready to anticipate costs, but how will we recover them? And how will we recruit interested individuals?”
A building in via Cittadella in Pinerolo, in the province of Cuneo, instead, has already begun its project- one of the first Italian condiminiums to produce and self-consume clean energy. Facilitated by the swifter authorisation process of individual collective self-consumption projects compared to energy communities, the building now has a 20 kilowatt solar energy plant on its roof, a system of thermic isolation on its facade, and a control panel in every apartment.
“All the energy we produce is used for the functioning of the condiminium: from the heat pump to the elevator. The remainder of the energy is shared between the tenants”, says the engineer Pietro Del Grosso. There is the bitterness of someone who feels restrained by bureacracy and legislation that do not permit ambitious thinking in his words, and at the inability of dozens of collective self-consumption initiatives to communicate with each other in the aim of creating one large energy community in Cuneo.
“We would like to create an enormous energy community powering thousands of volts, but the delays of the implementing decree have hindered us in various ways. Still, we are firm”, says Del Grosso. “Citizens will save between 50 and 150 Euros on their eletricity bills, that is to say, between 10 and 30%”. A fond dream in a historical moment in which bills have stricken the household budgets of many Italians.
The importance of not underestimating energy literacy
Typically, the young are the first to adhere to projects of collective self-consumption. 20-30% of condiminium tenants agree to them, but the other tenants do not. And often it is the elderly who decline. “But I am certain that when the GSE begins to give the delayed money, many other residents will also connect”, says Del Grosso.
Bureaucratic quibbles, ungodly waiting times, the inability to identify the appropriate point in which to build the plant and the need to authorise practices can significantly decentivise citizens in signing up. “We work in the environmental field and it seems simple to us. But how do those who don’t manage? At times we have sen cases of the data supplied by citizens and the electronic registration system not corresponding: if I put myself in the shoes of an ordinary person who builds a REC, I know that confusion dominates”, says Laura Borsieri.
The simlification of the process is therefore a (if not the) key element for making more people desire and opt for energy communities. Even before then, however, it is necessary to inform and guide citizens, because the topic of energy is more sensitive than ever. On Facebook, for eample, in the group “Energy Communities in Italy”, the questions of people who cannot even imagine connecting to an energy community as a consumer (and therefore not spending anything to finance the renewable energy plant) predominate. And on the profile of the Municipality of Storo, that hosts the hamlet of Riccomassimo in which the REC previously described is located, one resident has written: “What are these renewable energy communities? I don’t believe they’re free”.
The confusion, therefore, is great. Similar comments are the order of the day on the social media posts that announce the creation of similar projects. In the meantime, courses have begun to appear online to become “hosts” of energy communities, and there are certain regional laws- such as the virtuous one of Emilia-Romagna- that economically support the formation and reinforcement of the skills needed to create a plan for energy democracy. However, the decisive push must come from the Italian Government.
“Energy literacy” through a plan of effective communication will need to involve more elements, as the journal “Science” explains, such as the installation and use of devices for renewable energy; the various operational steps; the financial aspects; the social impact in addition to the environmental impact. Only in this way can citizens appreciate the value-based, social, and environmental impact of these initiatives. Perhaps even before their economic value.