Outliers or frontrunners? Exploring the (Self-) governance of community-owned sustainable energy in Scotland and the Netherlands

Community owned renewable energy initiatives are the emergent and self-organized arrangements where communities become both producers and suppliers of energy. Cases of community energy developments form Texel (Netherlands), and Undy and Urgha (UK) are the empirical grounds that demonstrate this capacity. As highly desirable community owned renewable initiatives may seem, they face many enablers. However, they are also confronted with various tensions, as identified in this chapter. A closer look of the governance space in which these community initiatives operate, reveals that tensions and opportunities span from socio-cultural, political, and technological axes. These initiatives are both outliers and frontrunners of a sustainable energy transition: they create new forms of institutions, challenge even benefiting to them instruments, dare to uptake risks and seize opportunities, and operate outside demarcated institutional space. Community owned energy initiatives constitute a new form of local renewable energy governance that deserves to be explored.