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Taking instances from extant findings from the literature, the study aims to examine the community perception toward renewable energy (RE) off-grid (mini-grid/microgrid) intervention, the underlying rationales for engagement of communities in RE off-grid projects, the different alternatives/models to engage communities in various phases of RE off-grid project deployment.

The study has followed the structured literature review to explore the identified research question of the study.

Based on findings from the review, the framework for effective community engagement in RE mini-grid projects is suggested. Furthermore, the study also draws suggestions and implications for future research and practice.

Based on such understanding the present study offers the framework which suggests the steps for the engagement of the communities in the off-grid projects. The key steps are managing the perception of the community (including generation of awareness among the community), planning for the benefits of the community, linkage the sustainable development goals (SDG), planning for the inclusion of the community and measuring performance (in the line of social and economic criteria and SDG).

This study finds the gap in the literature on the nexus of community, off-grid energy projects and SDG. Following the findings from the scholars in this field, a few gaps in the policy and practice have been highlighted which could be useful for practitioners and policymakers in this area.

The chapter will explore the growth and opportunities of small-scale local power generation and the implications for internet access for rural communities. Solar power has grown exponentially in the last decade across the world and has provided opportunities for the development of local energy communities and on microgrids across the world and in Europe.

The huge cost reductions experienced in solar and its relative mobile and flexible nature have made it a technology perfect for rural areas to develop their own sustainable source of electricity supply. The increasing rise of digital tools has coupled nicely with the advent of mass use of solar in rural areas and thus the connection between smart solar and smart villages has become increasingly a norm.

Rural communities in Europe have embraced solar technology, with many farmers using solar as a means to reduce their electricity costs and also generate new streams of income to improve their overall livelihoods. Some case studies from India, Germany, and Africa will be examined. Other experiences will also be considered, especially where double land use between solar technology and livestock has empowered rural communities.

Outside of Europe, Africa and Asia have also seen solar as a means to electrify remote rural villages. This has lead to the development of microgrids and new technologies that are less deployed in Europe, which are being rolled out for rural communities in the rest of the world. This has been particularly successful in creating smart rural communities as often digital communications have already reached these communities and thus power and telecoms are combining to provide clean and controlled power for millions in Africa. This chapter will also assess the growth of smart energy communities in non-traditional energy markets and determine what lessons we can learn from their experiences.

This chapter will examine other sources of renewable energy and the role that biogas, biomass, and others are playing in the creation of smart villages in Europe and beyond. Biomass has been the traditional tool for many rural communities to generate power and heat and thus an examination of how it now plays a role in smart villages is vital to understanding the energy transition we are experiencing in rural communities.

Work on the design and implementation for solar homes has been expanded to the community scale in several international projects. If low-carbon emission housing is to make an impact on citywide consumption of energy, we must move towards community-scale implementation of solar technologies, both in new housing developments and in existing ones. However, the uptake of solar communities requires new methods for implementation to promote innovation in the building industry, new policies and programmes on energy consumption and energy subsidies, as well as community-scale design guidelines for solar or other renewable technologies.

This research surveys the implementation process of selected solar community projects in Netherlands, United States and Canada. It looks at new policies and programmes that are promoting community-scale solar projects from the perspective of innovation in the building industry. It examines the various actors that are necessary for solar communities within an urban planning framework and identifies five main actor groups.

Community renewable energy has been widely advocated as a mode of implementation of sustainable energy technologies that contrast in various ways from those of public or private sector utilities (Walker & Cass, 2007). Community energy projects have been established in many countries around the world, including various parts of Europe (DTI, 2004; Lauber, 2004; Madlener, 2007), the United States (Hoffman & High-Pippert, 2005, 2009), Australia (Moloney, Horne, & Fien, 2010) and Japan (Maruyama, Nishikido, & Iida, 2007), forming part of a more distributed rather than centralised pattern of energy generation. For Seyfang and Smith (2007) they potentially represent examples of ‘grassroots innovation’, forms of niche-based social experimentation with wider significance for the emergence of forms of transition towards sustainable socio-technical systems (Smith, 2007).

The responsible politician for environment in Vorarlberg spoke at the Energy Gala in November 2002 in Bregenz and said: “It is necessary not only to discuss central regulations but to invest more in decentralised actions”. The communities are central players in this field because they can act in various ways: as authority, owner of buildings and as motivator for the people.

Two examples of strategies in Austria are introduced:

e5 - program for energy efficient communities (congruent to the European Energy Award)

This program supports communities with high ambitions on energy and sustainability. The program helps to give structure, tools and a quality insurance system, so that even smaller communities can act in a professional and efficient way. Additionally it is a labelling and awarding system, which is quite important because a lot of work in the communities happens voluntarily and it is important to give approval to these actors.

Energy point system in housing subsidies

In the federal state of Salzburg the energy point system is a subsidy system for energy-saving measures and the use of renewable energy in housing.

Quality points are given, depending on the energetic and ecological quality of a building. Every point increases the subvention that is granted by the government of the federal state Salzburg. Additional points exist, for example, for the use of biomass, solar energy and controlled living space ventilation. Using this simple system, the quality of sponsored housing was increased significantly and the use of renewable energies was successfully introduced into social housing. Today more than 80% of the residential buildings in Salzburg are heated by biomass and more than 60% of the buildings are using solar energy for hot water and heating.

The building sector contributes one-third of the energy-related carbon dioxide globally. Therefore, framing appropriate energy-related policies for the next decades becomes essential in this scenario to realize the global net-zero goals. The purpose of the proposed study is to evaluate the impact of the widespread adoption of such guidelines in a building community in the context of mixed-mode buildings.

This study decentralizes the theme of improving the energy efficiency of the national building stock in parcels by proposing a community-based hybrid bottom-up modelling approach using urban building energy modelling (UBEM) techniques to analyze the effectiveness of the community-wide implementation of energy conservation guidelines.

In this study, the UBEM is developed and validated for the 14-building residential community in Mumbai, India, adopting the framework. Employing Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) compliance on the UBEM shows an energy use reduction potential of up to 15%. The results also reveal that ECBC compliance is more advantageous considering the effects of climate change.

In developing countries where the availability of existing building stock information is minimal, the proposed study formulates a holistic framework for developing a detailed UBEM for the residential building stock from scratch. A unique method of assessing the actual cooling load of the developed UBEM is presented. A thorough sensitivity analysis approach to investigate the effect of cooling space fraction on the energy consumption of the building stock is presented, which would assist in choosing the appropriate retrofit strategies. The proposed study's outcomes can significantly transform the formulation and validation of appropriate energy policies.

This study aims to focus on the nexus between off-grid systems and impacts on islands and remote villages in Ghana by investigating the sources and cost of energy, willingness to pay for electricity and impacts of off-grid energy on the local economy, education, health, social activities, the environment and migration.

Data were obtained from 110 households; heterogeneous impact analysis of off-grid technologies, average treatment effect by inverse probability weights (IPW) and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) models were used to analyse the data.

The sources of energy are gas, kerosene, wood fuel and dry-cell battery. All households in communities with neither electricity nor off-grid system were willing to pay for electricity. Households without off-grid systems (US$8.1) were willing to pay higher amounts per month for electricity. The off-grid technologies improve the local economy, social activities, security, the environment, education and health as well as reduce out-migration.

Most of the literature on mini-grid/off-grid systems have been from the engineering and the technical perspective, with a few on the socioeconomic impacts of the systems and consumer engagements. Besides, methods including descriptive statistics, energy technology sustainability framework and qualitative analysis were used in these studies. Nevertheless, the authors used a more rigorous method of the doubly robust inverse probability weighted regression adjustment model and a heterogeneous method to model the impact analysis of off-grid systems.

This study aims to analyze the effects of variations in annual real interest rates in the assessment of the techno-economic feasibility of a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) for an off-grid community.

Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software is used to propose an HRES for Abadam community in northern Nigeria. The HRES was designed to meet the basic needs of the community over a 25-year project lifespan. Based on the available energy resources in the community, photovoltaic (PV), wind turbine, diesel generator and battery were suggested for integration to serve the load requirements.

When the annual real interest rates were taken as 10 and 8 per cent, the total amount of total energy fraction from PV, wind turbine and the diesel generator is 28, 57 and 15 per cent, respectively. At these interest rates, wind turbines contributed more energy across all months than other energy resources. The energy resource distribution for 0, 2,4 and 6 per cent annual real interest rates have a similar pattern, but PV contributed a majority of the energy.

This study has used annual real interest and inflation rates dynamic behavior to determine optimal HRES for remote communities. Hence, its analysis will equip decision-makers with the necessary information for accurate planning.

The results of this study can be used to plan and design HRES infrastructure for off-grid communities around the world.

After years of attempting to develop renewable energy (RE) mainly through large private sector initiatives, the UK government has broadened its approach to provide more support for other actors in this sector. The purpose of this paper is to assess what role social enterprise (SE) activities can play in the development of the RE sector in the UK.

The approach consists of an initial effort to map the sector in terms of project types; and to assess the benefit of supporting SE activities in RE through an empirical case study. Two types of SE‐RE initiatives are examined here, namely a Scottish SE‐RE consultancy (the Highlands and Islands Renewable Energy Company – HICEC) and the various SEs it supports in developing RE projects through grants like the Scottish Community and Household Renewables Initiative (SCHRI).

A typology of enterprise activities in RE is developed, based on activities along the RE supply chain. The case study demonstrates the value of partnership working between HICEC staff and the staff of local SEs, and suggests that the emergence of a community of practice is a key benefit of the SCHRI and the collaborative way in which it was implemented by HICEC. The success of this approach does throw up questions about replicability in different geographical settings.

This is the first paper to explore SE activities in RE. It illustrates that collaborative learning‐by‐doing by individuals across organisational boundaries is key for the successful implementation of RE projects that are new to the UK.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the community’s view of power outages and their effect on sustainable community development. This research has three aims. This project will first investigate how a blackout affects a community’s ability to live sustainably.

A survey questionnaire was developed that included 22 factors from the literature. The questionnaire was distributed to diversified segments of society from different regions of Pakistan and examined critical factors affecting sustainable community development. A total of 349 (77%) responses were received.

The study results confirm that power failure negatively affects the sustainable life of a community. This study found that the reduced production of large manufacturing, decrease leisure and comfort, reduced public administrative efficiency, loss of educational opportunities and increased use of traditional energy sources are the most important factors for sustainable community development. Findings also suggest that policymakers and practitioners in public organizations need to ensure that projects are completed in a timely manner to meet growing community needs.

The purpose of this research is to address knowledge gaps related to power outages and sustainable community development. The major impact of power disruptions on communities was previously disregarded in development discourse. Participants in these discussions recognize communities as genuine stakeholders and acknowledge that power outages can have a substantial impact on their economic and social development. However, previous studies have neglected to address this phenomenon.