Introduction

The just transition agenda has become prominent in European Union energy policy but remains contested (Sabato, 2024). The research agenda on just transition and energy poverty alleviation is marked by a technical–economic bias and a neglect of socio-political questions (Bouzarovski, 2022). Moreover, there is a lack of empirical data on how just transition policies are implemented in fiscally constrained, southern European contexts. This study investigates Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) in Greece as promising eco-social and just transition policy tools (De Vidovich, 2024) and hybrid institutional spaces at the intersection of energy justice, social policy, and participatory energy governance frameworks. It employs a comparative analysis of a rural, top-down, municipality-initiated REC and an urban, bottom-up, citizen-initiated RECs which undertake actions to address energy poverty. This approach elucidates the relationships, interactions and interdependencies that determine how participatory energy policies and just transition agendas are mobilized and actualized within a local and structural context. This study thus highlights energy poverty not as a merely technical issue of resource distribution, but as a central just transition policy question entangled in broader questions over welfare distribution, recognition, and citizenship. The just transition is shown as a socio-technical issue that is spatially bound and embedded in pre-existing institutional contexts.

Methodology

This study asks whether and under what conditions RECs can deliver just transition policy goals such as energy poverty alleviation in resource-constrained environments. Utilizing a qualitative methodology, it reveals through semi-structured interviews and document analysis the taken-for-granted assumptions within the discourses and practices of the RECs. The interviews included 15 stakeholders from various backgrounds, such as REC members, civil society representatives, municipal government officeholders, and academic experts. Policy documents were analyzed from a variety of state, non-state, transnational and national institutions, enabling a broad coverage of discourses. The institutional context of Greece was also examined through careful analysis of the policies, laws, and discourses on the just transition and the role of RECs at the national level. This interdiscursive triangulation helps uncover the interlinkages between systemic, institutional, and subject-formation-level processes.

Results

This study highlights the tensions between inclusion and exclusion, market-logic and community governance, and philanthropy and solidarity in RECs seeking to achieve just transition goals. This exposes the pervasiveness of market logics within decentralized initiatives showing an institutional tension between market-based integration and community-based governance. Both initiatives are constrained by unfavorable grid access policies, lack of institutional support, and regulatory instability. Both initiatives respond to these constraints by implementing needs-based, residual redistribution for energy-poor households while excluding broader community members.

The governance formation and geography of the initiative influence their effectiveness in achieving just transition policy objectives. The top-down initiative is shown to more closely replicate the dominant policy paradigm of privatized energy, but local visibility gives rise to democratizing tendencies and claims-making based on citizenship, particularly from excluded island residents. Even though the top-down nature of the REC ensured adequate resources to cover all residents’ needs, initial mistrust led to low participation and uneven allocation of membership shares. As a result, the REC maintains 150 outstanding applications leading to tensions between included and excluded residents. The perceived injustice over access to the project and the distribution of benefits leads to lower stakeholder engagement threatening the project’s long-term social sustainability. The bottom-up initiative showcases discursive imaginaries oriented towards collective democratic control of energy and access to energy as a right but is tempered in practice by operational constraints including a lack of resources and consideration of beneficiaries’ anonymity, thus implementing technical–economic solutions for energy poverty. These operational constraints and regulatory instability have prompted fears over the cooperative’s financial viability leading to the project’s stagnation and inability to include more members.

Conclusion

The comparative approach allowed for the exploration of the effect of different governance structures (top-down bottom-up) and geography (urban-rural) on the success of just transition, community-based policies. This spatializes the just transition agenda, elucidating the translation of EU policy into national and local contexts. The results indicate the need for further empirical exploration of RECs and their potential to achieve just transition objectives as mediated by local contexts. It also highlights the need to not assume the success of community-based initiatives but rather to implement carefully designed policies that ensure adequate institutional support at the national and supranational level while accounting for local specificities. Energy transition policies aiming at strengthening decentralized production need to move beyond “one-size-fits-all” approaches and implement tailor-made solutions that empower local communities to achieve just transition objectives. Finally, this study underlines RECs as compensatory mechanisms for highly concentrated energy markets and inadequate redistribution policies in fiscally constrained southern-European policy environments.