ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Political Participation
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2025.1603673
This article is part of the Research TopicPost-pandemic democratic innovation: transparency, citizen behavior and decision-makingView all 3 articles
Renewable Energy Communities as a Democratic and Solidaristic Model for Tackling Energy Poverty
Provisionally accepted
- University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
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The paper explores renewable energy communities (RECs) as innovative legal tools to structurally address energy poverty. Starting from the evolution of the concept of energy poverty in European and national policies, and through a case-study analysis of the Italian regulatory framework, the analysis highlights the potential of RECs to support an ecological transition based on solidarity and democratic participation. Particular attention is devoted to the role of local authorities, especially municipalities, in fostering socially oriented RECs. The aim is to recognize RECs not only as technical mechanisms for energy production and sharing, but as concrete expressions of inclusive and constitutionally grounded energy governance. The analysis shows that RECs, if adequately supported by institutional frameworks and public actors, can serve as effective tools for promoting energy equity and territorial cohesion, particularly in structurally fragile contexts such as those observed in the Italian case.
Keywords: Energy communities, Renewable energy communities, Energy poverty, Solidariety, democratic participation
Received: 31 Mar 2025; Accepted: 06 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Di Capua. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Viviana Di Capua, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
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