Community Energy Federation of Ireland

The Community Energy Federation of Ireland (CEFOI) took part in a meeting with OECD consultants at the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment (DCEE) on Friday 17th October 2025, alongside several community energy organisations who are implementing, or working towards implementing, community-owned energy generation projects.

This is part of an EU-funded DCEE project focused on community owned renewable generation above 50kw, to research barriers and identify solutions, with a focus on regulatory reform. The OECD has been engaged to coordinate and administer the project and this fact-finding mission was an initial stage of the project.

While there is keen interest, commitment and capacity within Sustainable Energy Communities in Ireland to establish 50kw+ community owned renewable generation projects, so far almost all such projects have been prevented from going live, by the barriers in their way.

At the meeting, CEFOI raised

• need for better consultation and communication between government agencies and energy communities on the design and implementation of policy and supports
• the high costs of, and barriers to, grid connection from ESB networks for community energy generation projects
• the length of processes involved, requiring planning permission processes to be completed before grid connection processes are started, and the issue of SRESS/RESS supports obtained at the beginning of the process expiring before grid connection is granted, which causes communities who have invested much time and finance in projects, being prevented from going live with their projects
• lack of clarity on various policies and procedures, such as what exactly support funding will cover and not cover
• removal of curtailment payments from the new SRESS scheme (which were included in the previous RESS scheme), which reduces the financial viability of projects

In addition, CEFOI called for the “100% community owned” rule to be retained, in order to prevent supports designed for community energy being diverted to profit-driven projects. CEFOI emphasised that this 100% rule is not the barrier to progress, rather the above barriers are what are preventing communities proceeding with their projects.

We look forward to continued engagement with the department on these issues and this project, to push for the removal of barriers to community owned renewable generation projects in Ireland.