Community energy: A practical guide to reclaiming power

Administrative barrier: When there is so much paperwork and bureaucracy involved in a project that it becomes difficult for the project to proceed this is considered an administrative barrier.

Clean Energy Package: Also known as the Clean Energy for All Europeans’ package. This was a big set of EU laws that was agreed in 2019. It sets out all the rules for that will govern the energy system for the crucial decade up to 2030.

Community Energy: The collective ownership of renewable energy by any community. It can also include the ownership or another kind of energy asset such as insulation or electric vehicles.

Citizen Energy: A broader term that applies to all kinds of involvement of citizens in the energy market, includes community energy and prosumers.

Energy poverty: Energy poverty refers to the inability to guarantee necessary domestic energy services due to a combination of low income, high energy expenditure and poor energy efficiency of households.

Energy sobriety: Coined by the French members of the Energy Cooperative movement. It communicates the concept of consciously “giving up” energy use when it feels possible.

Energy efficiency: is to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a home allows a building to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a comfortable temperature.

Energy Democracy: Energy democracy is a political, economic, social and cultural concept that merges the technological energy transition with a strengthening of democracy and public participation.

Extractive Economy: This is a mode of economy that is based on exploiting resources such as minerals or fossil fuels. It suggests unsustainable levels of use.

Decentralized energy system: A decentralized energy system is one where the energy production facilities are not centrally located. The dominant system in Europe is currently a centralized one with larger fossil fuel or nuclear plants producing huge quantities of energy that must then be transported long distances. A decentralized energy system allows for more optimal use of renewable energy as well as combined heat and power, reduces fossil fuel use and increases eco-efficiency.

Installed capacity: The power generation capacity of a particular plant. It is usually expressed in megawatts, and can come from nuclear, thermal, solar or wind energy or hydropower.

Megawatt (MW): The amount of energy that can be produced by a renewables system is often expressed in Megawatts. A megawatt is a large amount of energy and can power something like 650 homes. Most residential solar systems will not produce anything near a megawatt. The average onshore modern wind turbine produces 2-3 megawatts.

Municipality: A municipality is the governing body of a town or local district.

Photovoltaic (PV) devices generally means solar. It refers to devices that generate electricity directly from sunlight via an electronic process that occurs naturally in certain types of material. PV panels are solar panels

Prosumer: this term applies to energy consumers who also produce some of their own energy. In general use it applies to single households.

Remunicipalisation: commonly refers to the return of previously privatised service or utility to municipal control in this case often the energy grid or a local or regional supply company.

REScoop: A rescoop is a renewable energy cooperative.

Transposition: This is the process by which EU laws such as the Renewable Energy Directive REDII get put into national laws. The transposition of the REDII should be completed by June 2021.