This is the best summary I could come up with:
Last year, local authorities inaugurated a 250 kilowatt peak (kWp) solar energy park in an abandoned quarry on the edge of town that produces and distributes enough electricity for about 250 residents all living within a 2-kilometer (1-mile) radius.
And it's what the European Commission promotes as "collective self-consumption" — linking consumers and producers in the same area — in an effort to sustainably transform the EU's energy system while ensuring local communities reap the benefits.
A 2016 study by Dutch research consultancy CE Delf estimated that by 2050 half of all EU households — around 113 million — could produce energy, either individually or through a collective.
Enercoop, which offers contracts of up to 30 years to give producers stability, works with regional companies such as Courant Naturel to install solar panels, with the aim of boosting local economies.
In 2018 and 2019, the EU passed directives promoting so-called "citizens and renewable energy communities," but critics say considerable costs and bureaucratic hurdles are keeping these initiatives from getting off the ground.
"It's still not an easy ride for small-scale producers," said Goncalo Pinto Mendes, a researcher at Finland's Lappeenranta University of Technology and investigator on the European Commission's Green Energy Transition Actions (GRETA) project.
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