Collective Energy Practices: A Practice-Based Approach to Civic Energy Communities and the Energy System

Civic energy communities (CECs) have emerged throughout Europe in recent years,
developing a range of activities to promote, generate, and manage renewable energy within the
community. Building on theories of Social Practice, we develop the notion of Collective Energy
Practice to account for the activity of CECs. This expands the practice-based understanding of energy,
which thus far has mostly focused on energy practices of the home. Additionally, we build on earlier
practice-based thinking to come to our understanding of a ‘system of energy practices’. This view
places the collective energy practices of CECs in a broader mesh of sites of practice, including
policymaking, commercial activity, and grid management. Taking account of the enabling and/or
restricting the influence of this broad system of energy practices is crucial in understanding the
development of CECs’ practices. We accomplish this through the qualitative analysis of our long-term
empirical research of five Dutch CEC sites, but also draw on our earlier fieldwork on smart grid
projects in the Netherlands.