The CONCERTI project: from Magliano Alpi’s energy community to an innovative integrated inter-municipal energy sharing paradigm

Energy communities, envisioned by the European regulatory framework, are innovative forms of production, consumption and sharing of locally produced renewable energy. Italy began its development of renewable energy communities in 2019, with experimental transitional legislation, and only in early 2024 did the overall framework settle down. As the regulatory framework has evolved, energy communities have taken on different potentials than originally envisioned, both in terms of economics and spatial extent. In this continually evolving context, the CONCERTI project, an ambitious initiative aimed at enhancing the concept of energy communities at the market area level, highlights the shift in the integration of energy communities into a more extended territorial system, toward new frontiers of distributed production and consumption, including with the introduction of aggregating entities capable of having members of energy communities participate in electricity and service markets.