Discussion: Czech energy-self-sufficient communities need not be a distant prospect

On Wednesday 26 June, a discussion entitled Prosumers and energy communities: international experience and Czech reality was held at Braun House. The discussion was organised by the Association for European Policy in cooperation with Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung e.V. and EURACTIV.cz, and focused on community energy in light of the new Winter Package.

Jan Vitásek of EURACTIV opened the event by introducing the topic and the panellists. The discussion focused primarily on trends among electricity prosumers, energy-self-sufficient communities and the development of community energy, as well as, more generally, the benefits of decentralised energy and the implementation of the Winter Package.

Various issues related to the topic were presented by Layla Sawyer, an analyst at Smart Energy Forum; Krisztina André of Bündnis Bürgerenergie, who among other things worked on the Energiewende concept; Milan Kazda, mayor of the energy-self-sufficient municipality of Kněžice; Stanislav Chvála of Nano Energies; and Tomáš Jagoš, a renewable energy expert at Hnutí Duha.

Prosumer, not consumer

Layla Sawyer was the first to speak, presenting the concept of community energy. She stressed that the emerging trend is the transformation of the conventional customer, or “consumer”, into a producing customer, or “prosumer”. Rather than merely drawing electricity from the grid, as is currently the case in the vast majority of instances, such customers can also feed electricity into it.

Sawyer introduced her organisation, Smart Energy Forum, which brings together entities on both sides: those supplying electricity on the one hand and consumers on the other. The company seeks to make current energy systems more flexible. A “prosumer” is a new type of customer who can generate electricity themselves, shift consumption to times of day that are more suitable for them, and, for example, offer electricity they have produced to others, leading to energy and financial savings.

The needs and options of prosumers differ in each country or region within a country. For example, it is advantageous for a prosumer with a favourable feed-in tariff in their country to supply electricity to the grid, while a prosumer in a country with expensive electricity is better off using generated power to cover their own consumption. Companies dealing with such flexibility then develop products that take account of conditions in the prosumer’s area, with the key factor they monitor being the energy regulatory framework in the country concerned.

According to Sawyer, greater flexibility in electricity generation and consumption would also bring wider benefits to society. Decentralisation contributes to building more resilient energy systems, improving energy security, reducing dependence on electricity imports and supporting innovation. There are several types of energy-connected and partly self-sufficient communities. Some choose joint purchasing of energy resources (joint purchasing of DERs), for example jointly buying a wind power plant; others choose joint ownership of a resource or create energy retailer systems among themselves.

Energy-self-sufficient municipalities in the Czech context

Milan Kazda, mayor of Kněžice, the first Czech energy-self-sufficient village, spoke next. Kazda stressed that the reason it was possible to equip the village in this way was the period in which the investments were made, which was very favourable to similar projects. Today, with more bureaucracy and worse access to state support, implementing a similar project is very difficult. The project was launched in an effort to address local air pollution and municipal waste. The village sought a comprehensive solution: securing cheap electricity, dealing with waste generated in the municipality, and so on. Kněžice now generates its own electricity and has invested in a biogas plant.

Kazda identified the lack of operating support for projects of this type as a major problem. This is also why mayors of other municipalities have little incentive to introduce similar solutions. He also mentioned the lack of preparedness in Czech legislation, despite the considerable potential of renewables, especially rooftop PV, in Czechia. According to Kazda, support for such projects should be linked with support for electromobility, while support for storage could be another step. He also sees major potential in generating energy from waste through biogas plants. Unfortunately, since Kněžice implemented its project, the legal environment and conditions for such projects in general have changed so much that the same project is now virtually impossible to carry out. In any case, a proactive approach by municipalities is very important for every innovation: waste, for example, is always a major issue for a municipality, while biodegradable waste has considerable potential.

Bavarian PV potential runs into bureaucracy

Krisztina André was the next speaker, outlining the conditions for implementing energy communities in Germany, particularly in Bavaria. André criticised the lack of support for solar energy in southern Germany, where PV nevertheless has major potential. She highlighted the importance of solar energy, which is now economically accessible: virtually every building could have panels on its roof. Solar energy received extensive support in the past, but this support subsequently declined, resulting among other things in the loss of many jobs in Germany.

André sees the future of energy in decentralisation and customers generating their own electricity. According to surveys, 50 % of the population would like to generate electricity independently. Building a solar installation on one’s roof should not be merely a “bonus” when constructing a house, but should become the standard.

Green electricity must evoke positive emotions

Stanislav Chvála of Nano Energies, a company involved in trading, supplying green electricity and also operating as a flexibility aggregator, pointed to an important element in introducing innovative technologies: emotions. When it comes to smart grids and smart home solutions, for example, new technologies must have the potential to excite people. Nano Energies operates not only in Czechia but also, for example, in Germany, and Chvála mentioned the differing attitudes towards new solutions among people in these two countries. He also briefly discussed recent developments in the energy market.

For example, it was originally not possible to genuinely ensure the supply of “green” energy. Guarantees of origin then emerged as an intermediate stage, but Chvála criticised the concept. In practice, the guarantees of origin market works in a way that an entity may purchase a guarantee from Norway, for example, while the electricity it ultimately consumes is generated from coal in the Czech Republic (note: this was commented on by a representative of OTE, the Czech electricity market operator, who partly questioned the statement and noted that the customer primarily affects the energy mix rather than the electricity they directly consume).

Nano Energies supports so-called peer-to-peer trading: customers should know from whom they are buying electricity, which is the element that brings the aforementioned emotions into the issue. Ultimately, this factor may play a greater role in a customer’s product choice than money. Customers seeking an alternative approach to energy consumption want to buy electricity generated nearby, from local sources and local businesses. Chvála sees access to data and metering as the biggest obstacle to developing the flexibility aggregation business. With a greater amount of more detailed consumption data, more suitable products could be designed and energy savings could therefore be greater.

Mayors are generally not interested in energy projects

The final speaker was Tomáš Jagoš of Hnutí Duha. In his view, legislation must be properly set up for energy communities to develop, as it is currently practically absent. This makes their introduction more difficult and renders some elements of implementation virtually impossible. Jagoš presented the results of a study examining mayors’ views on barriers to introducing energy innovations. Mayors identified financing as the biggest problem, followed by the high administrative burden.

Jagoš criticised legislative barriers to energy community projects, such as the lack of operating support for renewable energy sources. He also noted that potential investors have concerns over the profitability of such projects, so it is not enough merely to allow communities to be established; incentives to create them are also needed. Smaller investors generally face greater obstacles than commercial developers. Jagoš then pointed out that although the Winter Energy Package contains provisions on implementing energy communities, for example in the Renewable Energy Directive and the Electricity Market Directive, Czech legislation is currently absolutely unprepared to support such projects. Neither the relatively new National Energy and Climate Plan nor the amendment to the Act on Supported Energy Sources mentions community energy resources at all.

Among the practical problems with introducing energy communities, he cited the lack of strategic documents at municipal level, as these are mandatory only at regional level. There is also a shortage of human resources: few people are available to manage municipal energy, while energy auditors and advisers are lacking.