Energy communities in a smart urban ecosystem. Institutional, organizational, psychological, technological issues.

This chapter examines what could foster the creation of energy communities. The predominant focus on the cooperative organisational model depends on prejudices that a priori restrict the scope of energy communities. The crucial problem concerns what motivations could induce a community to organise and operate as an energy community. The most plausible answer is that there can be many different motivations, as is typical in contemporary pluralistic societies. Four main categories of motivations can be identified: ideal-based motivations, economic motivations, hedonistic motivations, and autarkic motivations. The psychological, organisational, and institutional challenges, which have often been relegated to the background, also play fundamental roles. An important consideration while designing new and revised institutional frameworks is also whether mere decentralisation or a more radical polycentric system should be the goal.