Belgian Energy Communities: Key Challenges and Opportunities

Chadi Mahfoud, Rebecca Guglielmino, Gabriele Sapienza, Mohammed Qasem, Jon Teres-Zubiaga, Sesil Koutra

2025

Abstract

Being a ‘zoon politikon’, humankind develops its first ‘communities’ to harvest food, build shelter, and have socio-political interactions. Nowadays, the term has been configured as a challenging and promising concept for climate change mitigation and adaptation and advocates for the incorporation of various solutions within urban settings. In this contribution, a targeted and comprehensive understanding of the patterns of the ‘energy community’ (renewable/citizen) phenomenon is provided to provide clear observations unveiling the research gap. The work explores the spectrum of the ‘energy community’ according to the literature, as well as motivations and contextual factors in the Belgian context from different perspectives highlighting the necessity for sustainable development that harmonizes human activities with natural ecosystems. What is finally the energy community and what motivates its actions? What are the key factors that insight into the successful stories of energy communities in Belgium? What are the differences in the three areas of the Belgian territories? Building on this overview, this paper highlights the current research gap and provides insight into how the communities are emerging in three areas, the opportunities, and challenges they pose, and how their diffusion might be further facilitated despite their complexity and multi-dimensional nature.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Mahfoud C., Guglielmino R., Sapienza G., Qasem M., Teres-Zubiaga J. and Koutra S. (2025). Belgian Energy Communities: Key Challenges and Opportunities. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Smart Cities and Green ICT Systems - Volume 1: SMARTGREENS; ISBN 978-989-758-751-1, SciTePress, pages 122-129. DOI: 10.5220/0013354600003953

in Bibtex Style

@conference{smartgreens25,
author={Chadi Mahfoud and Rebecca Guglielmino and Gabriele Sapienza and Mohammed Qasem and Jon Teres-Zubiaga and Sesil Koutra},
title={Belgian Energy Communities: Key Challenges and Opportunities},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Smart Cities and Green ICT Systems - Volume 1: SMARTGREENS},
year={2025},
pages={122-129},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013354600003953},
isbn={978-989-758-751-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Smart Cities and Green ICT Systems - Volume 1: SMARTGREENS
TI - Belgian Energy Communities: Key Challenges and Opportunities
SN - 978-989-758-751-1
AU - Mahfoud C.
AU - Guglielmino R.
AU - Sapienza G.
AU - Qasem M.
AU - Teres-Zubiaga J.
AU - Koutra S.
PY - 2025
SP - 122
EP - 129
DO - 10.5220/0013354600003953
PB - SciTePress