Empirical insights into enabling and impeding factors for increasing citizen investments in renewable energy communities
Marie-Charlotte Guetlein, Joachim Schleich
Abstract
This study empirically investigates factors that alternatively enable or impede citizen investments in renewable energy communities (RECs). These factors include key ownership and governance features of REC business models following a strong market logic. Analyzing data from a survey of 1022 adults in France through a discrete choice experiment and a contingent valuation experiment on stated investments in RECs, we find that participants value the opportunity to delegate their voting rights to a trustee but dislike a capital-based voting rule and co-investments by firms. While a capital-based voting rule weakens the stated propensity to invest, it increases the invested amount for participants who are willing to invest some amount. Higher rates of return and higher shares of self-consumption of electricity spur stated investments. These findings offer insights that can inform the transformation of business models to facilitate the scaling-up of RECs. Unless a REC business model with the ownership and governance features considered in this study generates higher rates of return, it appears to face a trade-off between lower citizen participation rates and the leveraging of higher investment amounts from firms, municipalities, and potentially also citizens.