Capturing the business opportunity related to renewable energy communities – with this goal, MET Energia Italia gave the go-ahead to the energy service company MET Italia Energy Solutions in July 2024. At KEY Energy 2025, we took stock of the prospects of CERs (renewable energy communities) in Italy with Giuseppe Rebuzzini, CEO of MET Energia Italia.
Original article in Italian: Energia & Mercato
How did you develop your offer for energy communities?
MET Energia Italia invests directly in energy community projects, which are generally structured around a plant, owned by us, on a roof in industrial areas. We also take care of the management and maintenance of the systems.
Above all, we facilitate the creation of the energy community. It is essential to have a relationship with the area in which this community is to be created. We therefore help the entity that gave life to the CER to expand it: our sales force proposes the residential end customers to join the community at no cost.
Once operational, we share with the members the incentive that remunerates the plant we have built, creating a package for them that includes a long-term electricity supply contract, i.e. 10 years. The CER benefits from an incentive for 20 years and we propose a contract for 10, with possibility for renewal for another 10, with an advantageous price, compared to current costs, and above all stable and certain over time.
Market numbers tell us that CERs are still few and often guided by social purposes, with the action of municipalities and parishes. What room do you see for a more commercial model, like yours?
The number of CERs is a relative figure: an association of people, even just two, is enough to set one up. A very different thing is a CER that has a project, a plant built and operating. Projects sponsored by municipalities or parishes always pose the problem of who puts up the money to build the plant: often, these are donations. They are excellent inclusion projects, but they do not realize the full potential of the entity.
CERs could come to represent several GW and this is not happening yet. We propose an industrial and commercial model: it is MET Energia Italia that builds the plant and creates a community. Then, of course, our business model seeks the support of the local administration, but in terms of collaboration. If the municipality wants to join the CER with its buildings, so be it, but we are addressing businesses and citizens directly.
The term "community", therefore, should not be understood only in the sense of solidarity, but can it be the basis of a different and profitable model of production and consumption?
Around the idea of community, several ideas can arise that are beautiful on paper but difficult to implement in practice. We must bear in mind that the bureaucracy involved in the creation of a CER is complicated and difficult.
For example, we are fighting to understand how we can anticipate the benefit of the incentive to customers and companies in the energy community. State company GSE (Energy Services Manager), in fact, disburses it after a year and a half. We would like to advance this allocation on the invoice, every month. But it is not yet clear whether it is possible to do it, or how.
This aspect is not trivial because CERs are something new, which the end customer does not yet know well. Thus, it must be explained that membership costs nothing and brings savings: if the customer starts seeing it only after 18 months, however, that is certainly not ideal.
We are talking about 70 euros a year for an average family: is this a sufficient amount to convince a citizen to inquire about joining?
It doesn't seem like so little to me for just a signature and spending nothing. A clearly visible benefit in the bill is tangible and immediate. Unfortunately, as sales professionals, we know that when something is free, the customer fears that there are hidden clauses. This psychological aspect of the customer is an aspect to work on to facilitate the growth of energy communities.