In the updated Renewable Energy Directive II (RED II), the EU clearly considers community energy as a key factor for future Renewable Energy (RE) market uptake and mandates Member States to implement regulatory frameworks for enabling and facilitating this process.
At the same time, several barriers prevent citizens from becoming (bio) energy producers and bioenergy projects to be more appealing. Among others, lack of preparedness for communities to tap the full bioenergy market potential, lack of bioenergy stakeholders’ awareness of the potential of communities and missing/ unsupportive (local, regional and national) framework and policy conditions. For a people-powered energy system, the Horizon 2020-funded project BECoop (2020-2023) aims at putting communities in charge of their local renewable (bio) energy generation.