For years, European energy policy has been built around a compelling vision. As the energy system becomes more decentralized, citizens are expected to become more active participants. Households and local businesses will generate electricity, share renewable energy, provide flexibility to the grid, engage with digital platforms, and take on roles that were once reserved for professional market actors. Energy communities are increasingly viewed as the vehicle through which this transformation will occur. The idea is attractive because it promises something larger than decarbonization alone: energy democracy.
Deliverable D1.2 of the U2Demo project explores how citizens perceive energy sharing, which conditions they consider fair, and what motivates them to participate in local energy communities. Drawing on interviews and observations across four pilot communities, the deliverable examines how people experience onboarding, governance, behavioral change, and benefit sharing in practice. The findings raise an important question:
What if Europe’s vision of the active consumer does not fully align with how citizens actually want to participate?
Based on research conducted across four diverse pilot communities in Portugal, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, the deliverable offers a rare glimpse into the perspectives of the people who will ultimately determine whether energy sharing succeeds or fails. And while the findings differ across contexts, they reveal a surprisingly consistent message. The future of energy sharing may depend less on creating active market participants and more on creating trusted communities.
The Energy Transition Is Becoming a Social Challenge
Much of the energy transition has been framed as a technical challenge. Can we deploy enough solar panels? Can we electrify heating and transport? Can we build sufficient storage capacity? Can digital platforms optimize local energy flows? These remain important questions, but they are increasingly accompanied by another challenge. How do small citizens collectives participate in a system that is becoming more complex every year?
The communities interviewed in U2Demo are remarkably diverse. They include social housing residents in Belgium, rural households in Portugal, families in an Italian energy community, and entrepreneurs operating on a highly constrained Dutch electricity grid. Yet despite these differences, participants repeatedly emphasized the same priorities: affordability, sustainability, fairness, trustworthiness, local value creation and ease of participation.
What is striking is that very few participants described their ambitions in terms of energy markets, optimization algorithms, or trading mechanisms. Instead, they talked about affordability, sustainability, local value creation, and the goals their communities were trying to achieve. This suggests that the next phase of Europe’s energy transition may be less about deploying new technologies and more about designing institutions that people trust enough to use.
The “Active Consumer” May Not Want To Be Active
One of the most intriguing findings of D1.2 concerns the concept of participation itself. European legislation increasingly assumes a future in which consumers become active actors within decentralized energy systems. Yet the interviews reveal that most participants do not aspire to become energy specialists. Across the pilots, participants expressed a strong desire for: simpler energy management, clear information, automated support, transparent outcomes and trusted guidance.
This is not a sign of disengagement. Quite the opposite. Most participants were highly motivated to reduce costs, increase sustainability, and contribute to collective goals. What they did not want was to manage unnecessary complexity. This creates a challenge for platform developers and policymakers alike. If future energy systems require citizens to act as highly engaged market participants, adoption could remain limited. If participation can occur without burdening users with excessive complexity, the opportunities become far greater.
The implication is profound, and the findings point to an important balance. Participants wanted energy sharing to be simple and accessible, but they also wanted transparency, trust and a sense of control over how decisions are made. The challenge for future energy sharing services may therefore be less about increasing participation and more about designing systems that combine automation and convenience with fairness, transparency and trust.
Energy Democracy Is Not the Same as Direct Control
Another assumption challenged by the research concerns governance. Energy democracy is often presented as a model in which citizens exercise direct influence over energy systems. While participants strongly supported democratic principles, their preferred form of participation was more nuanced.
Members wanted influence over important decisions. They wanted transparency regarding how resources and benefits were allocated. They wanted community priorities to be reflected in decision-making. But they were also comfortable delegating operational responsibilities to trusted managers, boards or experts.
Across the pilot communities, trust repeatedly emerged as a prerequisite for effective governance. Technical expertise was valued. Professional support was welcomed. Members generally preferred that day-to-day operational tasks remainin the hands of a trusted and knowledgeable manager, while community members retain influence over important decisions. This may have important implications for the future evolution of energy communities.
The most successful models may resemble representative democracy more than direct democracy. Citizens want influence over important decisions. They do not necessarily want responsibility for day-to-day operational management.
The Real Flexibility Challenge Is Human Behaviour
Flexibility is often described as one of the most valuable resources in a renewable energy system. The dominant conversation focuses on technologies: batteries, electric vehicles, smart appliances, and energy management systems.
Yet D1.2 highlights a reality that receives much less attention. Flexibility is ultimately exercised by people. Whether flexibility can be delivered depends not only on available assets but rather on daily routines, working hours, household composition, comfort expectations, digital literacy and motivation to adapt behaviour. A heat pump may be technically flexible. An electric vehicle may be technically flexible. A battery may be technically flexible. But that flexibility is only unlocked if it fits into people’s lives.
The experiences across the U2Demo pilots illustrate this clearly. Communities with similar technologies often showed different capacities to shift behaviour because factors such as energy literacy, available assets, daily routines, work schedules and household composition shaped what was realistically possible for participants. Conversely, communities with limited technical sophistication sometimes demonstrated a strong willingness to adapt when the benefits were clear and understandable. This suggests that Europe’s flexibility challenge is not only an engineering problem. It is also a behavioural one.
The Future Debate May Be About Fairness Rather Than Efficiency
Perhaps the strongest message emerging from the deliverable concerns fairness. The energy sector frequently evaluates success through efficiency metrics: self-consumption rates, congestion reduction, economic optimization, and flexibility activation.
Community members do not disregard efficiency and performance. They clearly value outcomes such as affordability, sustainability and effective energy sharing. At the same time, discussions about energy sharing repeatedly highlighted questions of fairness and how costs, benefits and opportunities should be distributed within the community.
Across all pilots, participants converged around a principle that could be described as “equal opportunity”. Owners of generation assets should be able to use their own energy first, but surplus energy should then be accessible to the wider community in a manner that is perceived as fair and inclusive. Additional effort and flexibility could justify additional rewards, but exclusion was broadly rejected.
This finding points toward a challenge that may become increasingly visible as energy sharing scales across Europe. The most efficient outcome is not always the most legitimate outcome. The most profitable allocation is not always the most acceptable allocation. And the best performing algorithm may fail if community members do not trust its results. As energy communities become more sophisticated, questions of fairness may become just as important as questions of efficiency.
Trust Is Emerging as a Critical Energy Infrastructure
Perhaps the most surprising conclusion from D1.2 is that trust repeatedly appears where engineers often expect technology to provide the answer.
Trust determines whether people share data. Trust determines whether people delegate decisions. Trust determines whether communities remain cohesive when difficult choices arise. Trust determines whether energy sharing feels like cooperation or competition. In many ways, trust functions as a form of infrastructure within energy communities. And unlike batteries, software platforms or grid assets, it cannot be installed overnight. It must be built through transparency, fairness, good governance and trusted leadership.
Why This Matters Beyond U2Demo
At first glance, Deliverable D1.2 appears to be a study of user requirements and social preferences. In reality, it provides a valuable window into a larger European debate. As policymakers seek to expand citizen participation in energy systems, they face a fundamental question: Should energy communities be designed around markets, or around people?
The findings suggest that the most successful future models will be those that balance technological sophistication with social legitimacy. They will combine digital innovation with trust. They will combine efficiency with fairness. And they will allow citizens to participate meaningfully without requiring them to become energy experts.
The key lesson is therefore not that Europe needs more technology for energy sharing. The key lesson is that Europe must determine how people actually want to participate in the energy transition. That is ultimately the question D1.2 places at the centre of energy democracy.
Read the full Deliverable D1.2: Active Consumers’ Needs and Social Parameters to explore the research findings, pilot experiences and design recommendations shaping the next generation of citizen-centred energy sharing platforms.
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