Collective self-consumption and energy community models represent a new development in the landscape of energy transition and renewable deployment goals. These models offer innovative approaches to accelerate decentralized generation, enhancing citizen participation in making energy systems evolving towards a structure both more decentralised and more decarbonised.

The regulatory frameworks governing these initiatives directly impact core regulatory responsibilities including tariff design, market access, consumer protection, and system planning. Regulators must adapt frameworks to accommodate prosumers’ active participation, without compromising system reliability or creating undue cross-subsidization.

In the European Union (EU) specific rules and directives promote collective self-consumption and new players like Renewable Energy Communities; however, even outside the EU these concepts can provide benefits to networks in terms of increasing hosting capacity. Further, energy communities can be solutions for improving affordability of electricity for low-income or disadvantaged customers, as in the US with “community solar” programs, or for enlarging access to electricity, as for some donor-sustained programs of mini-grids in African countries. By examining diverse implementation approaches, ERRA members could identify regulatory tools best suited to their specific contexts.