Institutional prefiguration: community energy development through spaces of orchestration

As a response to calls for decentralised energy infrastructure and inclusive decision-making processes in energy transitions, renewable energy communities (RECs) have emerged as innovative instruments to combat energy poverty and promote low-carbon energy. During 2021-2024, the Eurosolar4All project developed four solar photovoltaic (PV) RECs in four local contexts in Rome (Italy), Almada (Portugal), Coeur de Savoie (France), and Barcelona (Spain). Funded through the Horizon 2020 framework programme, the project aimed to produce diverse replicable models to alleviate energy poverty in vulnerable households. This paper examines the Eurosolar4All project and its pilots through the lens of prefigurative politics focused on local institutions. We draw on two questionnaires implemented across the four pilots, 18 semi-structured interviews with prospective beneficiaries, eight expert interviews with practitioners and participant observation during project meetings and site visits. The empirical analysis shows how the pilots worked to identify and empower vulnerable households while facing challenges related to path dependence and institutional inertia. These challenges relate to the project leaders' (1) intramunicipal, (2) intermunicipal, and (3) trans-local work towards the enablement of pro-poor solar RECs. We show how the prefigurative politics of implementing the Eurosolar4All scheme surface in diverse ways in and across the cases and a related community of practice with ten follower municipalities and theorise the different levels as spaces of orchestration for prefigurative politics. We discuss how orchestration can counter an incumbent preference for centralised large-scale energy infrastructure, deeply embedded in modern energy systems (path dependence), to realise the potential social benefits of energy communities. In closing, we reflect upon how this enhances our understanding of the systemic limits to rapid upscaling of energy communities.