Tackling energy poverty in Europe through energy communities: tracing the innovation journeys to support an emerging niche

Energy poverty (EP) is an obdurate and significant problem across Europe, worsened in recent years by rising living costs, escalating energy prices and intensifying global geopolitical tensions. While government initiatives are patchy and insufficient for the scale of the problem, novel actor configurations and innovative approaches are needed to address the issues. Energy Communities (ECs), who are diverse in structure and founding objectives, are increasingly expected by European policy to alleviate EP; however, how they can or do innovate to do so is poorly understood, which hinders the development of appropriate support for them to be effective. This paper, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from 77 ECs in 14 European countries, with 6 in-depth case studies, examines innovation journeys of ECs in addressing EP in their wider communities. By applying the concept of social innovations (SIs), we identify key types of innovation and how they emerge within ECs. We understand SIs as new ways of thinking and understanding, organising and implementing EP alleviation action. We further examine the networks and actor configurations that facilitate these processes, assessing the extent to which SIs transcend the local context. Through observed knowledge exchange, we identify an emerging energy poverty alleviation niche within the now well-established EC niche. From this new understanding of social innovation processes and niche emergence in ECs, we make recommendations for European and national policies to enable ECs as actors in EP alleviation across Europe, leveraging their ability to form social relationships with hard-to-reach households.