PODCAST: Energy cooperatives established by the end of 2025 will benefit the most
The featured guests on today’s episode of the E-magazine Podcast are professionals who engage with energy cooperatives on a daily basis: Jakub Manicki, the president of the OP.EN energy efficiency cluster, and Tymoteusz Mądry, the legal expert of this organization.
E-Magazyny Podcast – Your go-to source for insights on energy storage and renewable energy. Tune in to today’s episode and explore:
- Understanding the concepts of an energy community, energy cooperative, and energy cluster. Which form of an energy community is considered optimal?
- The process of setting up an energy cooperative and the advantages of incorporating an energy storage facility into the investment.
- Strategies to achieve a 40% level of self-consumption of energy produced within the cooperative.
- Guidance on who can assist in establishing an energy cooperative.
- The feasibility of establishing an energy cooperative in an urban setting, such as for the block in which we reside.
“Energy storage is crucial for energy communities. Why? Because without them, we are unable to meet the requirement of a 70% self-consumption level, which is necessary for the establishment of an energy cooperative under national law. Including energy storage in the investment plan also allows you to obtain a higher form of support,” stated Jakub Manicki, president of the OP.EN cluster, on E-magazyna Podcast.
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Transcription of the conversation. The text was generated automatically.
0:02
Hello, Hanna Baster here, and this is E-magazyny Podcast.
Today we will talk about energy communities, about various forms of these communities, because it turns out that due to recent changes in legal regulations, they can be very different forms of organization. And why are we talking about energy communities at all? Because energy prices are rising, because the European Union is constantly implementing new regulations that encourage the implementation of renewable energy sources, and because the threats to the security of energy supplies related to the events in Ukraine and the war with changing attitudes are definitely negative for Russia. All this makes us think more about renewable energy. And we started to think more about the fact that maybe we need to change the production system of supplying this energy. And energy communities, which can be the solution to all these problems.
I will talk about this topic with my guests, who are Jakub Maniecki, chairman of the management boards of the open cluster energy optimization cluster operating at the Northern Chamber of Commerce in Szczecin, and attorney Tymoteusz Mądry from the Aspiratio Legal law firm, who is also a member of the open cluster expert group, right?
02:11
Yes, good morning. Thank you for the invitation.
02:20
Good morning, hello, so first of all, let’s talk about what energy communities are, what we are talking about, is this an option available to every local government? Is it for every resident, because it must not only be public institutions that create such energy communities? Briefly speaking, if I can say at the outset as much as I have learned about communities, an energy community of any type must be established in a rural or urban-rural commune. At this point, it cannot be established in the city. It is an authority that aims to produce energy without any additional profit, i.e. without profit on the sale of this energy. Please, add something else.
03:19
We must also be aware that an energy cooperative is not the only form of operation of community energy provided for by the Act on Renewable Energy Sources. There are more of these forms and here we can mention, for example, the energy cluster in which Kuba and I operate, but these are also forms planned or initiatives dedicated to smaller groups, such as civic energy communities, collective prosumers and in the future virtual prosumers, because these regulations have not yet entered into force here. And, of course, also the individual form, which is the prosumer, these are the basic forms of what we call citizen energy, i.e. an energy system where this energy is created in a more grass-roots way. It is not produced by large power units, by large energy companies and delivered through long supply chains to end users, but is produced more locally and this path between the producer and the entity using energy using energy is definitely shortened or, in the case of the consumer, it is often basically a profit.
04:44
Well, if I have photovoltaic panels installed on the roof, I basically use the energy for my own needs and I do not use the transmission network in any way.
And this is the main marker and main goal of Citizens’ Energy, apart from, of course, helping the energy source, i.e. shortening supply chains and making them resistant to crisis situations, and thus reducing them.
Reducing the risk associated with network failures or any attacks on the transmission infrastructure.
05:18
You said that we have different types of these energy communities, could we somehow distinguish them for our recipients, show our listeners which ones would be more beneficial and advisable for whom?
That, as you said at the beginning, talking about the energy cooperative, here we are fighting this limitation in relation to rural communes and urban-rural energy cooperatives.
05:44
Yes, we cannot set it up in an urban commune. This is an important limitation. The communities I mentioned earlier, i.e. the collective prosumer or the Citizens’ Energy Community, are tools dedicated to natural persons. In turn, the cluster is dedicated more to legal entities, business entities or local government units. Energy cooperatives, on the other hand, have a two-fold nature.
We can create both cooperatives consisting only of natural persons, and cooperatives, of which I am quite an enthusiast and which I am trying to promote, composed of legal persons, including, among others, the association of local governments. These are interesting forms of cooperation from their point of view.
Sorry, Kuba was talking, I misunderstood.
07:18
I would just like to say somewhere on a more general level about the idea of such energy communities. These are various forms of organization and here, in fact, whether they are cooperatives, whether they are clusters, or all other forms that are planned in Polish legislation to launch to implementation, they are actually a tool. However, the idea behind these energy communities is to engage the community at the local level. This is the development of distributed energy. Distributed energy is one of the pillars of the European Union’s energy transformation. And these different types of energy communities are supposed to be a tool to develop this distributed energy. And why develop it? Well, in order to provide independence from the professional energy sector, which, on the one hand, is associated with a monopoly, and on the other hand, with the fact that it is also dependent on fossil fuels, which, as we know, the European Union does not have adequate quantities, therefore it has to import from outside, and it was in the context of the war in Ukraine that it showed how big a problem it is for us, so on the one hand, building this independence, and on the other hand, actually giving the opportunity or involvement of this local community mainly in rural areas today, which, well, it is not only a matter of the fact that these poverty, often energy poverty, but also that the development prospects there are slim there, and therefore development here energy communities has many, many positives, which, of course, in this target dimension, many years must pass for this idea to come true, but it has many, many positive influences on the development of these areas, so we are talking about the fact that energy, or otherwise, will no longer be the times where electricity or heat is actually supplied from the outside and we have no influence on how much it costs and in what quantities it is supplied. We are to have an influence on how energy is produced locally, how it is managed and how it is consumed.
10:22
So, to sum up what you are saying, because you are now talking about why it is worth establishing such an energy community, so let’s try to summarize it in a few points? Why is it worth it for now in this urban-rural-rural area, we’ll move on later, maybe also to cities, but it’s like a separate issue and a bit different, a bit different. Here are the benefits, so if we could summarize these benefits like this, it is definitely some kind of security here. Less dependence on fossil fuels, which come from Russia, and as you know, houses in villages usually have their own boiler rooms fired, usually with coal or gas. This is indeed a very big plus, another plus, I think, is a reduction in the bill. Of course, in the long term, if you invest in renewable energy. So, a few more words for people who, for example, are listening to us now, who manage municipalities, manage rural, urban and rural municipalities. Why is it worth considering this option?
11:40
It is worth considering this option not only because we will have cheap energy and not only from renewable energy sources. I might expand on the fact that these energy communities are a solution that actually changes paradigms related to energy, because it actually builds such an energy environment in the local area and it is not just a matter of installing renewable energy, because it is actually building the whole idea of a de business fact. Well, a cluster is a bit easier, but in order to start building a cooperative, you need to perform a thorough technical and economic analysis, conduct an audit of energy consumption points, consider how these points use energy, and then design production capacity, supported by energy storage facilities or in a few years, probably with hydrogen technologies, and then creating an entire management and settlement system for such a community, so we are de facto talking about us taking over the role of the distribution system operator and energy supplier, so yes, it is really very, very a large and quite complicated process. These formal or legal issues are the simplest element, Tymoteusz, correct me if I’m wrong?
14:03
They are probably the simplest element, but despite this, I disagree with you, because on the one hand, the very creation of an energy cooperative, if we are talking about it formally, is not a very complicated task. However, there is the element that you very rightly mentioned, i.e. regulating the issue of internal relations between individual cooperative members themselves, especially in a situation where a cooperative is composed of, for example, a local government unit or more than one local government unit of a municipal company or, for example, private entities that are entrepreneurs. Then the issue of what you mentioned arises, i.e. the issue of how the internal settlement system works within the cooperative, who produces the energy, what energy is consumed, at what hours, what the issue of settlement between the producer and the entities using the energy looks like . Here, in fact, in this relatively simple model of a cooperative, some contractual complexities come into play, because the fact that we will have cooperatives, we will have the statute of the cooperative, the method of voting, the voting power, does not solve all the problems related to the settlements of this community. energy. Here, additional contractual regulations must appear, which are not necessarily that simple. However, they are certainly large, I fully agree, it is simpler than preparing the entire model related to energy production, selecting generation capacity, selecting a possible energy storage facility, and, above all, preparing energy consumption profiles for individual members of such a community.
15:48
Now we talk a little about the difficulties associated with establishing energy communities. Challenges like that, which may scare our listeners away a bit, but of course we have to talk about them as much as possible, but I would like to ask right away whether there are any entities to which such a commune mayor can turn for help? Well, I guess it may be difficult for the inhabitants of a given commune, or even the authorities of such a commune. Well, on your own, like going through all these steps and just taking it all in. Can you suggest any bodies that can assist in this process so that it goes quite smoothly and quite quickly?
16:50
I agree that it seems a complicated process, it is complicated to actually create such a cooperative not only colloquially speaking on paper, but to actually provide these benefits – cheap energy, independence, involvement of the local community, such green jobs. Well, it does require the work of many specialists. Well, in answer to this, we recommend our expert team, which we have created at the Northern Chamber of Commerce in Szczecin, consisting of experts from many industries, Tymoteusz as an expert in legal matters, me as an expert in technical matters, we have experts in the field of all kinds of funds. Their funds are not only EU funds, which can be obtained for basically every stage of creation and subsequent operation of such an energy community. We’ll probably get to this thread in a moment. However, there is and will be a huge, huge amount of money for this.
17:44
You operate in the north-west of Poland, but I wonder if there are any other equivalents of your organization in other parts of the country? Is the cluster you created something completely unique in Poland, or can a commune from the Southeast of Poland also find help somewhere closer? I don’t know, for example, in technology parks, where they can still seek help. if it is too far to Szczecin.
18:37
Currently, I am working with an energy cooperative composed of 3 communes in the Biała Podlaska district, i.e. near Biały Podlaska. Of course, there are other entities that also deal with issues like us, i.e. establishing energy community cooperatives. However, we should remember, as we have already mentioned, that this is not a one-dimensional process. This is not a simple process, so when starting such a project, first of all, you need to check whether the Partner in which we operate has the competences to manage all the areas I mentioned.
19:16
Which will provide support in the field of technical consulting in the field of strategic consulting in the field of financial consulting as well as legal consulting. A wide range of skills is really needed here, so when looking for a partner to implement such a project, we must pay attention to whether it allows for the implementation of all the salaries we have mentioned. It is not easy to find a competent partner who will cover all areas of the relationship. Well, it requires some effort and paying attention to whether all these issues are addressed in the course of the conversation when discussing the framework of this project, because it is very easy to address the issue itself related to, for example, establishing an energy cooperative from a formal and legal perspective. However, this is what the founding of such a cooperative really is. 1/10 of the work that needs to be done, right? Before making a decision about establishing a cooperative, a number of analyzes should be performed related to energy consumption profiles, available connection capacities, technical and environmental possibilities of implementing a given investment in a given area, the choice of a method of supplying this cooperative with clean electricity, whether it be photovoltaics or whether it is should they be biogas plants, or maybe they should be windmills? If the regulations in this area change, then, as I said, there are many aspects and it is necessary to ensure that all of them are managed before the implementation of projects, including the softer aspects.
Public consultations are also important. It is important that the local community understands that this is a benefit for them. When the analysis, which we also mentioned, shows that the best solution will be a biogas plant, these social consultations will not be easy, because the understanding of this technology is at a quite low level and often raises great social resistance, so yes To sum up, it is really worth turning to entities that are actually able to take care of all these areas. It is definitely worth going to universities that also have such competences. It is worth starting to look for this information now, it is worth learning and it is worth taking this path. Changes already today, because sooner or later all local governments will have to consider such actions. The sooner the better.
I assume that it is a bit like photovoltaics. Those who tried to enter photovoltaics at the very beginning in 2015, when the first version of the Act on Renewable Energy Sources appeared, today these installations have already paid off, they are already producing energy that is basically free for these investors.
And the same will happen with energy communities, which, introduced today or being considered for introduction today, will certainly provide great benefits in the next few years, and those who are late may lose this race.
23:33
And speaking about the fact that it is worth establishing energy communities now, I would go straight to the co-financing funds, because you said earlier that there is a lot of money waiting for energy communities and that it will be more and more, so let’s talk briefly about the specifics, what are the funds, from what programs, in what years, in what period can we expect available forms of financing?
23:43
When it comes to available forms of financing, I think we should focus on what funds we can use today. In fact, we are talking about the national reconstruction plan and Measure B 222, which gives us the opportunity to finance both this analytical part and create this strategy and business model for both energy cooperatives and energy clusters. But it also provides investment opportunities, and here these funds are really large amounts, because in the first recruitment process, clusters and cooperatives could receive up to nearly PLN 1.5 million for creating a strategy and business model.
This also shows that this designer, let’s call it that, understands how complex and large this process is. However, the investment part in December, we do not know exactly when it will start yet. Path B1. which will provide investment opportunities for the creation of pilot installations by energy cooperatives, will amount to nearly PLN 25 million. And there will be various types of installations. We do not know the exact framework of this program – biogas plants are actually promoted quite strongly, but of course it depends on local conditions.
25:52
Yes, if we actually have a suitable substrate in a given commune, which is often the case, to build such a biogas plant and make it a profitable venture, then it is really justified. However, here, in the programs that are currently in place, we have the opportunity to finance many technologies.
Is subsidizing energy storage also an option here?
26:28
Yes, energy storage is crucial, because taking into account the basic assumptions of creating, for example, an energy cooperative, without energy storage, we are not able to meet these requirements regarding the amount of energy that such a cooperative is to produce and the level of self-consumption . Plus, the use of energy storage is often additionally rewarded in these subsidy programs. For example, you can obtain a higher level of support if a given RES installation has a correlated energy storage facility.
Without going into technical details, because I think that each case must be considered individually, but there are very large funds available and will be available. Whether from the Feniks program, from the national reconstruction plan, or even directly from Brussels. Where the most advanced technologies, for example hydrogen, will be financed directly from the European Commission.
28:00
I would add this to inform our listeners, because if, for example, you would like to install photovoltaic installations, for example on all houses in a given village in a given town, then very often the problem of network load arises, and such an energy storage solution allows to solve this problem, so when thinking about the energy community in general, it is probably worth thinking about these loads on additional networks and how it can be solved? Energy storage is one of such solutions?
28:23
Exactly, well, as we mentioned, we cannot imagine a cooperative without an energy storage facility and a cooperative that does not cooperate with the network as an aggregator, as a solution that will de facto support the network in energy balancing, and did not burden it and in fact, if we think about it from the perspective of today’s development of this energy transformation, then this problem arises that in many cases, where, for example, so-called umbrella projects were carried out, i.e. installation in At one point, there were a large number of photovoltaic installations that simply worked as they did and placed a heavy load on the network. Well, in the case of a well-organized, designed and built energy community, this will not happen because. It seems that the assumption is that this cooperative or this community should balance itself internally as much as possible and only then, let’s say, the villages.
Cooperate with the grid or provide surpluses to the grid in such an ideal model, even if this energy is to be released to the grid at the moment when it will be the most expensive. Currently, an energy cooperative is not able to sell energy to the grid, but I think that there will be a fight for this in subsequent amendments.
30:10
And if only Tymoteusz could say why there is such a provision not to sell this energy?
30:30
The main goal of an energy cooperative is auto consumption, i.e. using energy for one’s own needs. And this is also a solution that is very beneficial for cooperative members. Yes, because in principle, most of the energy produced within a cooperative should be consumed within it, so the fact of settling both the purchase of energy and the distribution costs, if any, of the energy being exempt from distribution costs, remains within the cooperative. As far as statutory regulations are concerned, the Energy Leasing Act stipulates that the level of auto consumption must be 70%, i.e. 70% of the entire energy demand of all cooperative members must be met by the energy generated within this cooperative.
This is actually quite a big development barrier in energy cooperatives today. Why? Because if we want to set up an energy cooperative, we must have a ready installation that covers up to 70% of the demand at that moment. Yes, and this is a topic that I and my team at the law firm discuss. We had the opportunity to work on the last amendment to the Act on Renewable Energy Sources, in a team at the Ministry of Agriculture, and we strongly advocated lowering this threshold to 30% and introducing solutions that require the cooperative to develop after its establishment, i.e., for example, within 5 years from Assumptions, this level of consumption is 40 or 50%, and in the next 10 or 15 years it will reach 70%. Well, the only thing that was finally achieved in this amendment to the act was the reduction of the auto consumption threshold to 40% for, let’s say, the first ones.
The initiators, or the first delay, will be created by the end of 2025. Yes, if we establish cooperatives by December 31, 2025, then this level is 40%. This is written in the act, but this preferential period, i.e. for 2 years, allows us to set up an energy cooperative with an auto consumption level of 40 percent. This is very important information worth emphasizing.
33:27
Finally, I wanted to move on to cities, because we are still talking about these urban, rural and rural areas. However, I thought so before recording this episode of ours, before our conversation. The fact that in cities people are very aware when it comes to ecology and sustainable development, maybe they also often have more resources, so I close here. This is the way to open such an energy community, for example, building photovoltaics in a block of flats at your own expense and using it yourself. Managing this seems quite strange. considering that cities probably have a lot of potential when it comes to interest in this type of forms and in renewable energy in general.
34:39
I agree. However, energy cooperatives, due to their nature and origins, as if taken from Western European countries, are dedicated to rural and urban-rural areas. I will come back a bit to what I was talking about, i.e. in the course of work on this amendment to the RES Act, we talked somewhere about whether we could try this and apply the same instrument also in urban communes, because it is simply a very beneficial. Yes, if we look at an energy cooperative in terms of strictly profitability, then today it is simply the most profitable form of an energy cooperative provided for in the Energy Act.
However, here we again encounter resistance in the form of available connection capacities and the efficiency of transmission networks. This is actually the biggest problem in the implementation of all renewable energy investments, especially in highly urbanized and heavily burdened areas. This solution was not proposed for cities precisely because of concerns about the stability of the network and the possibility of ensuring connection capacity, but for cities we have dedicated other forms of civil energy, which are also very signalized here today. We have not mentioned, among others, the collective prosumer, in the future the virtual prosumer, or the civic energy community. These forms are not as profitable as energy cooperatives, they do not have a planned support system, which I do not want to enter now because it is quite complicated. However, it is not the case that the city has been left completely in the RES Act. Have they been completely omitted, and the instruments intended for urban communes are not that attractive from the point of view of the support system for both of these support systems provided for in the RES Act for this type of entities.
But I agree that it also results from the fact that, as you mentioned, cities are richer than not. To put it very, very simply, and for this reason, this support system and model of operation of energy cooperatives is supposed to support the development, development of these rural areas for cities, as Tymoteusz mentioned, we have other solutions and in fact today in this block you mentioned you can install a photovoltaic installation as a collective prosumer and you actually benefit from renewable energy. Even very high subsidies can be obtained now, up to 50% of the investment costs, and will be possible in a moment. Because will it be possible to use renewable energy produced outside the place of consumption of this energy, i.e. the above-mentioned prosumer, virtual prosumer, which is planned to be introduced next year, so there are, there are many, there are many and there will be they will probably also evolve and change over time, because, as I mentioned earlier, it is a new paradigm of thinking about energy and that is what it will be. Well, it’s a bit of an integration project that will be developed, so have they introduced it, or has the legislator introduced these solutions? Can you see what challenges and problems are associated with this? And as the Minister of Climate once said, the act would be eternally renewable and amended from time to time. And I think this is probably the only way it can develop.
38:13
And so we end on this optimistic note, hoping that the number of energy communities will increase, and all forms of legislation here will increasingly support these forms of energy production. Thank you very much for your presence, our guests in the podcast magazine were Jakub Manicki, chairman of the board of the energy optimization cluster operating at the Northern Chamber of Commerce in Szczecin, and attorney Tymoteusz Mądry from the Aspiratio Legal law firm, member of the expert group of the Open cluster.
Thank you very much. It’s all. what we have prepared for you, thank you very much for your presence. We cordially invite you to our website, where you will find information about the energy sector every day. We also invite you to subscribe to our channel on YouTube and Spotify, thanks and see you soon.