Consumer (Co-)Ownership in Renewables in the Czech Republic

The support of consumer ownership of RES is not explicitly mentioned as a goal in any policy document as neither citizen energy nor community energy or prosumership as concepts so far have received government recognition. However, consumer (co-)ownership received explicit recognition of its crucial role in the 2018 recast of the Re-newable Energy Directive (RED II) as part of the Clean Energy Package. Independently, in 2016, the Czech Community Coalition for the promotion of RE made up of more than 60 cities and municipalities, associations, industry experts and the Hnutí DUHA was established. Furthermore, in April 2018 the Horizon 2020 project SCORE was launched with the aim to facilitate consumers to become (co-)owners of RE in three European pilot regions, one of them being the City of Litoměřice, employing a Consumer Stock Ownership Plan. More general, besides individual ownership, the following legal forms of business can be used as corporate vehicle for consumer co-ownership: associations of entrepreneurs, that is, an association of several self-employed persons invoicing under one name but otherwise mostly independent, (interest associations of legal entities, limited partnerships, limited liability companies, joint-stock companies, cooperatives, foundations and finally non-profit organisation. Finally, energy efficiency projects for privatised blocks of flats which were bought by the tenants from former state com-munal housing cooperatives in the 1990s can be a lever for consumer-owned RE pro-jects where the installation costs partly overlap with energy efficiency measures as, for example, insulation of rooftops and installation of rooftop PV systems.