Source
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32018L2001 — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Context: thesis · overseas regulatory comparator (community-energy law at supranational level) · not an NI model input
Original act as adopted - not the consolidated text
The held raw is the directive as published in the Official Journal (OJ L 328, 21.12.2018, p. 82; CELEX 32018L2001). RED II has since been amended, most substantially by Directive (EU) 2023/2413 (“RED III”); the consolidated text is not held, and whether the cited provisions have been amended since 2018 is not verified here. Use this page for the 2018 act as the origin of the legal category; check the live EUR-Lex consolidation before any currency-sensitive citation of the provisions as current EU law.
Summary
The recast EU Renewable Energy Directive (“RED II”) is the instrument in which the European Union created a named legal category for community energy: Article 2, point (16) defines a “renewable energy community” as a legal entity based on open and voluntary participation, autonomous, effectively controlled by members located in the proximity of its renewable energy projects, whose primary purpose is community benefit “rather than financial profits” REG_044. Article 22 then obliges every Member State to give these communities substantive rights (to produce, consume, store and sell renewable energy, to share energy inside the community, and to access all suitable energy markets) and to provide an “enabling framework to promote and facilitate the development of renewable energy communities”, with nine mandated features including removal of unjustified regulatory barriers, fair and proportionate procedures, distribution-system-operator cooperation, and accessibility to low-income and vulnerable households; the framework’s main elements report through the Member States’ integrated national energy and climate plans REG_044.
Its research value is as the supranational limb of the overseas-comparator set on regulatory_consenting_off_grid_nz: it shows a legislature purpose-building a legal category plus an enabling framework for communities in energy law, while no analogue exists at EU level for community settlement, since land-use planning is a member-state competence. The directive’s own single reach into planning, Article 15(3), works through the Member States’ planning authorities rather than creating any EU planning category REG_044.
Key claims
- claim: "IDENTITY AND LEGAL BASIS. The held text is 'DIRECTIVE (EU) 2018/2001 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 11 December 2018 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (recast)', published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L 328/82, dated 21.12.2018, made 'Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and in particular Article 194(2) thereof' - i.e. enacted under the EU's energy competence."
source_location: "Title block and citations, OJ L 328, 21.12.2018, p. 82"
- claim: "THE STATUTORY DEFINITION OF THE CATEGORY. Art 2(16): \"'renewable energy community' means a legal entity: (a) which, in accordance with the applicable national law, is based on open and voluntary participation, is autonomous, and is effectively controlled by shareholders or members that are located in the proximity of the renewable energy projects that are owned and developed by that legal entity; (b) the shareholders or members of which are natural persons, SMEs or local authorities, including municipalities; (c) the primary purpose of which is to provide environmental, economic or social community benefits for its shareholders or members or for the local areas where it operates, rather than financial profits\"."
source_location: "Article 2, point (16)"
- claim: "A RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE. Art 22(1): 'Member States shall ensure that final customers, in particular household customers, are entitled to participate in a renewable energy community while maintaining their rights or obligations as final customers, and without being subject to unjustified or discriminatory conditions or procedures that would prevent their participation in a renewable energy community, provided that for private undertakings, their participation does not constitute their primary commercial or professional activity.'"
source_location: "Article 22(1)"
- claim: "THE COMMUNITY'S MARKET ENTITLEMENTS. Art 22(2): 'Member States shall ensure that renewable energy communities are entitled to: (a) produce, consume, store and sell renewable energy, including through renewables power purchase agreements; (b) share, within the renewable energy community, renewable energy that is produced by the production units owned by that renewable energy community, subject to the other requirements laid down in this Article and to maintaining the rights and obligations of the renewable energy community members as customers; (c) access all suitable energy markets both directly or through aggregation in a non-discriminatory manner.'"
source_location: "Article 22(2)"
- claim: "A MANDATORY ENABLING FRAMEWORK. Art 22(3): 'Member States shall carry out an assessment of the existing barriers and potential of development of renewable energy communities in their territories.' Art 22(4): 'Member States shall provide an enabling framework to promote and facilitate the development of renewable energy communities. That framework shall ensure, inter alia, that: (a) unjustified regulatory and administrative barriers to renewable energy communities are removed; ... (c) the relevant distribution system operator cooperates with renewable energy communities to facilitate energy transfers within renewable energy communities; (d) renewable energy communities are subject to fair, proportionate and transparent procedures, including registration and licensing procedures, and cost-reflective network charges, as well as relevant charges, levies and taxes, ensuring that they contribute, in an adequate, fair and balanced way, to the overall cost sharing of the system in line with a transparent cost-benefit analysis of distributed energy sources developed by the national competent authorities; ... (f) the participation in the renewable energy communities is accessible to all consumers, including those in low-income or vulnerable households' - the full list runs (a) through (i), adding provisions on commercial-service communities, non-discriminatory treatment, finance and information tools, and regulatory and capacity-building support to public authorities."
source_location: "Article 22(3) and Article 22(4)(a)-(i)"
- claim: "THE FRAMEWORK IS MONITORED, OPTIONALLY CROSS-BORDER, AND CARRIED INTO SUPPORT-SCHEME DESIGN. Art 22(5): 'The main elements of the enabling framework referred to in paragraph 4, and of its implementation, shall be part of the updates of the Member States' integrated national energy and climate plans and progress reports pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2018/1999.' Art 22(6): 'Member States may provide for renewable energy communities to be open to cross-border participation.' Art 22(7): 'Without prejudice to Articles 107 and 108 TFEU, Member States shall take into account specificities of renewable energy communities when designing support schemes in order to allow them to compete for support on an equal footing with other market participants.'"
source_location: "Article 22(5), (6) and (7)"
- claim: "THE LEGISLATIVE RATIONALE IS COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND LOCAL VALUE. Recital (70): 'The participation of local citizens and local authorities in renewable energy projects through renewable energy communities has resulted in substantial added value in terms of local acceptance of renewable energy and access to additional private capital which results in local investment, more choice for consumers and greater participation by citizens in the energy transition.' Recital (71): 'Therefore, it should be possible for Member States to choose any form of entity for renewable energy communities, provided that such an entity may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations'; 'Renewable energy communities should be able to share between themselves energy that is produced by their community-owned installations. However, community members should not be exempt from relevant costs, charges, levies and taxes that would be borne by final consumers who are not community members, producers in a similar situation, or where public grid infrastructure is used for those transfers.'"
source_location: "Recitals (70) and (71)"
- claim: "THE DIRECTIVE'S ONLY REACH INTO SPATIAL PLANNING WORKS THROUGH MEMBER-STATE AUTHORITIES. Art 15(3): 'Member States shall ensure that their competent authorities at national, regional and local level include provisions for the integration and deployment of renewable energy, including for renewables self-consumption and renewable energy communities, and the use of unavoidable waste heat and cold when planning, including early spatial planning, designing, building and renovating urban infrastructure, industrial, commercial or residential areas and energy infrastructure, including electricity, district heating and cooling, natural gas and alternative fuel networks.' The provision instructs the Member States' own planning authorities to accommodate renewables; it creates no EU-level planning or settlement category."
source_location: "Article 15(3) (Administrative procedures, regulations and codes)"Relevance
The category-creation move, demonstrated in energy law. The finding on regulatory_consenting_off_grid_nz is that New Zealand law contains no structured community-scale residential pathway on general land; the closing question of that finding asked what such a pathway looks like where legislatures have built one. RED II is the supranational data point: the EU wrote a bespoke legal category (“renewable energy community”, Art 2(16)) with a membership test, a proximity test and a community-benefit purpose test, and then made an “enabling framework” for that category mandatory in all Member States, down to barrier removal, proportionate procedures, network-charge treatment and low-income accessibility, monitored through national energy and climate plans REG_044. The drafting pattern (define the community entity, then oblige the state to enable it) is exactly the structure a general-land community settlement pathway would need, demonstrated at the scale of a 27-state legal order.
The precise limit: the analogue stops at energy. There is no EU counterpart category for community settlement. Land-use and spatial planning are a member-state competence: the EU treaties confer no general planning competence on the Union, and environment-title measures affecting town and country planning or land use require unanimity in Council (Article 192(2)(b) TFEU; context statement, treaty text not held). The directive itself, enacted under the energy competence (Article 194(2) TFEU, per its citations), touches planning only once for present purposes: Article 15(3) instructs Member States’ own planning authorities to provide for renewables integration “when planning, including early spatial planning” REG_044. So the comparator must be cited precisely: EU law shows the category-creation move for energy communities, and is structurally silent on settlement communities because that domain sits with the Member States.
Cross-links. LIT_129 is the secondary source on how this framing is implemented across Member States (it reviews collective self-consumption and energy communities under RED II and the parallel Electricity Market Directive); LIT_128 models the category quantitatively (individual versus community self-sufficiency inside a renewable energy community). This page puts the primary legal text behind both.
Not an NI input. This is comparator evidence about a legal category in another jurisdiction; no engine cell draws a number from it.
Research targets
None new. This source supplies the overseas-comparator limb contemplated by the closed general-community-pathway question (RT_346), on the energy-law side, and opens nothing.
Notes
- Scope of this page is deliberately narrow. The directive is a large instrument (targets, transport fuels, heating and cooling, sustainability criteria, annexes); this page holds only the community-energy provisions (Art 2(16), Art 22, recitals 70-71, Art 15(3)). Adjacent but unextracted: Art 2(14)-(15) (“renewables self-consumer” / “jointly acting renewables self-consumers”) and Art 21 (self-consumer rights), the household-scale counterpart to Art 22.
- Currency (repeat of the banner): the held text is the 2018 act as adopted, not the consolidated version; RED II has since been amended, most substantially by Directive (EU) 2023/2413 (“RED III”). The amendment status of Art 2(16) and Art 22 is not verified against a held consolidated text.
- Parallel category not held: EU law also defines a “citizen energy community” in the Electricity Market Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/944), discussed in LIT_129; that directive is not held and the two categories should not be conflated.
data_quality: verifiedon the read: the raw is the official EUR-Lex full-text HTML of the OJ publication, and every key claim is quoted verbatim (tag-stripped, whitespace normalised, character content unaltered) with its article or recital reference.
Connections
Links to
Sources (2): LIT_128 · LIT_129
Concepts (1): Regulatory Consenting for Off-Grid Communities…
Referenced by
Concepts (1): Regulatory Consenting for Off-Grid Communities…