In North Macedonia, there still aren’t any energy communities. The concept of citizens or public institutions associating in one local community in order to accomplish a common goal, in this case, production of energy from renewable sources, in the Western European countries has been a reality for a long time. For several years, the energy communities are present in some Balkan countries like Croatia, Serbia, and Greece, and have achieved positive results. In Macedonia, even though it is one of the countries with the largest number of sunny days, the energy communities still aren’t functioning.
“The energy communities are the real way of democratization of the energy sector. The opening of new jobs will not be the only gain from these communities, but the citizens would gain a more affordable price for the electricity, including potential incomes” stressed Ivana Vuchkova, a program coordinator at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Foundation, during the conference titled “Schools Powered by Sun Energy”, organized by the “Go Green” NGO.
The energy community is a property of the local community, and its goals are achieving lower and more acceptable price for electricity or heating energy, achieving profit, protection of the environment and prosperity of the community through the act of producing energy.
The Energy Strategy predicts that by 2040 around 400-megawatt hours of energy will come from renewable sources i.e. from the sun, through systems placed on roofs of industrial, commercial, and residential buildings.
“One of Strategy’s measures, on which we worked extensively, is the building of 400-megawatt photovoltaic roof systems which is not something unsubstantial. A 100-megawatt systems are planned to be installed on industrial capacities and the remaining 300 megawatts are planned to be distributed among the households and the commercial and service sector” stresse Aleksandar Dedinec, a science associate at MANU’s Research Center for Energy and Sustainable Development.
