Macroeconomic impacts of energy communities and individual prosumers: an assessment of transformation pathways

Energy, Sustainability and Society

Research

Dirk Rübbelke¹  Stefan Vögele²  Andrew Ross²  Lisa Hanna Broska³ 

[1] Faculty of Business Administration, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Schloßplatz 1, 09596, Freiberg, Germany;Center for Environmental Management, Resources and Energy (CURE), Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44801, Bochum, Germany;Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institute of Energy and Climate Research–Systems Analysis and Technology Evaluation (IEK-STE), 52425, Jülich, Germany;Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institute of Energy and Climate Research–Systems Analysis and Technology Evaluation (IEK-STE), 52425, Jülich, Germany;Faculty of Business Administration, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Schloßplatz 1, 09596, Freiberg, Germany;

关键词: Energy communities;    Input–output analysis;    Economic impact;    Renewable energy;    Prosumers;    Citizen participation;    Energy transition;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13705-023-00395-3

 received in 2022-07-09, accepted in 2023-05-12,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundActive citizen participation, especially as collective prosumers in energy communities or as individual prosumers, is vital for a sustainable energy transition. As such, it is explicitly supported by European Union policy. It is the aim of policy-makers that a large proportion of the residential energy demand will be met in this way. At present, there is limited analysis on the macroeconomic impacts of such an increase in prosumers. In this study, we develop and apply an approach for assessing the macroeconomic impacts of transformation pathways, which depict potential developments of individual and collective prosumers.ResultsThe paper methodologically demonstrates how to macroeconomically assess scenarios and transformation pathways originating from cross-impact balance analyses by means of an input–output analysis. In particular, it is shown how qualitative data on future developments can be transformed into financial flows so as to enable an input–output analysis. Based on the assessment of two transformation pathways, our main findings suggest that there might be positive regional and national effects on net value added and employment as well as reductions in CO2 emissions. We find that the scale of the effects strongly depends on the spatial distribution of heterogeneous households and the underlying economic structure.ConclusionsOur study represents a methodological advancement by showing how scenarios and transformation pathways can be assessed in terms of their macroeconomic consequences. This study shows that energy communities and individual prosumers might generate positive effects on value added and on employment. Given that households fix their energy supply options for decades, political decisions to support the energy transition in the residential sector should be taken as soon as possible.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023

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