SOCIETÀ ITALIANA DI DIRITTO ED ECONOMIA
Grazia Greco (University of Milan)
Massimiliano Vatiero (University of Trento - Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI))
Barbara Antonioli Mantegazzini (Università della Svizzera Italiana)
Abstract
The EU recently formalized Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) by the RED II EU Directive 2018/2001, amended by Directive (EU) 2023/2413, after almost two decades of spontaneous initiatives. RECs represent forms of collective distributed generation and consumption of renewable energy resembling “commons” or common pool resources (hereinafter CPRs) in the economic meaning (Ostrom 1994). Our aim is primarily to understand whether RECs have a governance similar to that predicted by Elinor Ostrom for commons, basing on what is written in their charters.
For this scope, we collected and analyzed a sample (“preliminary sample”) of charters from France, Italy, and Switzerland (respectively 7, 5, and 4 documents) in order to create a leximetric analysis (Armour 2016, Adams 2017) coding template of the components of control rights and the design principles that characterize the governance structures à la Ostrom (Schlager and Ostrom 1992; Cole and Ostrom 2012; Ostrom 1998).
By employing this analysis, we aim to systematically evaluate the incorporation and representation of various governance mechanisms within the charters of RECs, also observing comparatively how these institutions develop across three different countries and trying to determine the reasons for these differences. The study, thereby, intends to offer valuable insights into the regulatory frameworks and operational dynamics of the phenomenon of RECs, which appears to be significantly propagating.