12th September 2026
Europe has built an enormous renewable-energy industry, but a new report from the European Court of Auditors raises a rather awkward question.
How much of that energy revolution actually belongs to the communities living alongside it?
The European Union has promoted the idea of “energy communities”, where citizens, small businesses and local authorities can collectively produce, store, share and sell renewable electricity.
It sounds attractive. Instead of communities simply watching wind turbines and solar farms being built around them, local people can become owners and participants in the energy system.
The European Court of Auditors now says the idea has considerable potential, but that potential is far from being realised.
Its Special Report 10/2026 found that the EU had achieved only about 27% of its objective of having at least one renewable-energy community in every municipality with more than 10,000 inhabitants by 2025. The auditors say the target was poorly designed, inadequately monitored and is unlikely to have been achieved.
There is an even bigger gap between expectations and reality.
When the EU was developing its renewable-energy policies, the European Commission estimated that energy communities could eventually own 17% of wind capacity and 21% of solar capacity by 2030.
The auditors now believe that even in the Netherlands, where community energy is relatively well developed, the figure could be closer to 4%.
That is not a minor difference. It suggests that the original vision of citizens becoming major players in renewable energy was considerably too optimistic.
Why has it proved so difficult?
Part of the problem is bureaucracy.
The EU has two different legal definitions, renewable energy communities and citizen energy communities. They overlap in some areas but have different rules. The auditors found that two of the four countries they examined were using national concepts that did not properly correspond with the EU framework.
For an energy company with lawyers and specialists this may be manageable. For a group of local residents wanting to put solar panels on a community building, it can become a considerable obstacle.
The problem is particularly relevant to apartment buildings, where residents may already have an organisation managing the building but may need to establish another legal entity if they want to create an energy community.
The auditors say clearer guidance is needed.
There is another problem which will sound familiar in Scotland: the electricity grid.
A community can install renewable generation, but that does not mean it can automatically connect it to the grid.
The European Court of Auditors found delays and refusals caused by grid congestion in the Netherlands and Poland. It suggests that energy storage could help because batteries could store electricity when production is high and release it later, reducing pressure on the grid.
That is particularly interesting for areas such as Caithness, where renewable generation has expanded rapidly while grid capacity has become an increasingly important constraint.
There is also a social question.
The original idea was not simply to create another form of renewable-energy investment. Energy communities were supposed to involve ordinary citizens, including people on lower incomes, and potentially help reduce energy poverty.
But the auditors found that none of the four countries examined had specific legal provisions actively promoting citizen participation in energy communities. Only Romania had dedicated legislation relating to vulnerable households.
This raises an important question for Scotland.
We regularly hear about the economic value of renewable energy, the investment it brings and the jobs it can create. But there is another form of economic benefit that is less often discussed.
Who actually owns the assets?
A wind farm can generate millions of pounds of electricity sales without the surrounding community owning any significant share of the project.
Community benefit payments can certainly provide local funding, but ownership is different. An owner receives a share of the long-term economic return.
The European report contains examples showing that community ownership does not have to mean enormous projects.
An Italian energy community installed a 19-kilowatt solar installation on an abandoned school. It generated around 20 megawatt-hours a year and used its income for local social projects.
In the Netherlands, one cooperative has 375 members and manages 1.3 MW of solar capacity and 6 MW of wind generation.
These are not substitutes for the giant wind farms needed to decarbonise the electricity system. But they demonstrate a different approach to renewable energy.
Instead of asking only where turbines should be built, it asks whether the people living there can become participants in the ownership of the energy system.
That distinction could become increasingly important in Scotland.
The Highlands and Islands have some of Britain's greatest renewable-energy resources. Caithness in particular has become an important part of the renewable-energy landscape.
But producing electricity locally and benefiting financially from producing electricity locally are not necessarily the same thing.
The European Court of Auditors report does not provide a ready-made Scottish solution. The UK and EU have different energy systems and regulatory arrangements.
It does, however, provide a useful warning.
If governments want communities to support the enormous infrastructure required for the energy transition, telling people that renewable energy is good for the country may not be enough.
People may reasonably ask what is good about it for their community.
Could communities own shares in renewable projects? Could local cooperatives develop solar, wind or battery projects? Could more electricity be consumed locally rather than simply exported elsewhere? Could storage help both communities and the wider grid?
These are questions worth asking in Caithness and elsewhere in the Highlands.
The European experience suggests that simply creating the legal right to form an energy community does not make it happen.
There must be finance, straightforward rules, access to the grid, storage and, perhaps most importantly, a reason for ordinary people to get involved.
The renewable-energy revolution is often described in terms of gigawatts, investment and national targets.
Perhaps the next stage should be described in a rather different way.
How much of the renewable-energy revolution can ordinary communities actually own?
Europe has discovered that building the turbines may be easier than building the community ownership to go with them.
Read the full report HERE
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