Framework for Evaluating Organisations’ Sustainability Drivers for Participating in Energy Communities

Energy communities are stated as an important building block in the transition to sustainable energy systems. Evaluating organisations incentives to join in them is not yet well understood and the measures for it are lacking. Our presumption is that organisations do not initiate and join energy communities solely in economic terms, but social and environmental drivers matter too. We propose a framework for evaluating the sustainability pressures arising from the local community, internally in the organisation and from the external macro-environment. Inter-dependences arising from local energy production and sharing differentiate the case of energy communities from many other sustainable practices. The independent and dependent variables in the framework are adopted from theories on corporate social responsibility, stakeholder theory and institutional theory. Acting upon these pressures and taking stakeholder interests into account bring not only legitimacy but enable also proactiveness in energy ecosystem formation and value sharing among the members in the energy community.