TY  - JOUR
AU  - Vögele, Stefan
AU  - Broska, Lisa Hanna
AU  - Ross, Andrew
AU  - Rübbelke, Dirk
TI  - Macroeconomic impacts of energy communities and individual prosumers: An assessment of transformation pathways
JO  - Energy, Sustainability and Society
VL  - 13
IS  - 1
SN  - 2192-0567
CY  - Heidelberg
PB  - Springer
M1  - FZJ-2023-02144
SP  - 13
PY  - 2023
AB  - Background Active citizen participation, especially as collective prosumers in energy communities or as individualprosumers, is vital for a sustainable energy transition. As such, it is explicitly supported by European Union policy. It isthe aim of policy-makers that a large proportion of the residential energy demand will be met in this way. At present,there is limited analysis on the macroeconomic impacts of such an increase in prosumers. In this study, we developand apply an approach for assessing the macroeconomic impacts of transformation pathways, which depict potentialdevelopments of individual and collective prosumers.Results The paper methodologically demonstrates how to macroeconomically assess scenarios and transformation pathways originating from cross-impact balance analyses by means of an input–output analysis. In particular,it is shown how qualitative data on future developments can be transformed into financial flows so as to enable aninput–output analysis. Based on the assessment of two transformation pathways, our main findings suggest thatthere might be positive regional and national effects on net value added and employment as well as reductions inCO2 emissions. We find that the scale of the effects strongly depends on the spatial distribution of heterogeneoushouseholds and the underlying economic structure.Conclusions Our study represents a methodological advancement by showing how scenarios and transformationpathways can be assessed in terms of their macroeconomic consequences. This study shows that energy communities and individual prosumers might generate positive effects on value added and on employment. Given that households fix their energy supply options for decades, political decisions to support the energy transition in the residentialsector should be taken as soon as possible.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000992406900001
DO  - DOI:10.1186/s13705-023-00395-3
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1007652
ER  -