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Short abstract:

This paper explores socio-technical principles for achieving sustainable, equitable energy systems, drawing on literature and empirical cases using the concept of energy-commoning.

Long abstract:

Community energy initiatives demonstrate the benefits of pioneering the use of renewable technologies, improving sustainability, ensuring reliable energy supplies and even creating local jobs. Such initiatives are seen as key to a successful energy transition. What remains largely unknown, however, are the conditions under which community-based initiatives thrive and why they have so far been little mainstreamed. This paper explores this question through the concept of energy-commoning. Energy-commoning refers to the idea of collective or collaborative management and use of energy resources and is an emerging field within energy studies. Similar to the concept of commons in general, which refers to shared resources, energy-commoning specifically refers to the approach of organising energy sources, technologies and infrastructure democratically and participatively to enable a more equitable and sustainable energy supply. In our context, the term is used in a broad sense, going beyond classical energy communities and placing the common (energy) good at the centre of different levels of organisation, allowing for a wider variety of empirical examples. While the social principles for developing and sustaining commons have been extensively studied and empirically validated (Ostrom 1990, Ostrom 2010, Wilson, Ostrom et al. 2013), there has been almost no research exploring the principles for commons-enabling technologies and their practical relevance. The paper explores this question through a literature review and with reference to empirical examples of community-led multi-energy systems.