Building a renewable energy community. Analysis of three co-development projects

Abstract

Since the mid-2010s, participatory renewable energy (RE) projects in France have included so-called co-development projects, bringing together a private developer, a citizens’ association and a local authority. Yet little studied, this article proposes an analysis based on the following question: In what way does the cooperative process supporting co-development ENR projects constitute a form of commoning of energy production that contributes to the “citizen energy transition”? Based on a study of three cases, and through the prism of commoning, we analyze the social construction of cooperation between heterogeneous players aimed at the collective management of ENR production. We show that, in these projects, the creation of energy commons is based on five variables: a heterogeneous cooperating community, the articulation of plural logics (market, public and reciprocal), the territorialization of resources, democratic governance and conflictuality, provided it is the vector of compromise.