Community payments Case studies from across Europe

Payments by TSOs to communities who are present in the vicinity of new grid infrastructure have become common practice throughout Europe. These payments (also known as community compensation/gain/benefit) have been seen as a way to both increase local support and to supply an “appropriate benefit” to communities that host grid infrastructure. At the same time, such payments have been criticised as a tool to ‘buy’ local community support. Finding the right, legitimate approach to agree upon such payments is therefore of high importance.

This brochure, looks to act as a knowledge-sharing tool by presenting six case studies of community payments from across Europe. Five of these case studies are from the electricity grid sector (Ireland, Germany, France and Italy) with a sixth coming from the wind energy sector in Scotland. By creating a common understanding of how TSOs and energy companies across Europe are designing and implementing their community payment mechanisms, we hope to improve practices.

In September 2018, we released a second edition of the brochure, building upon the original that was published in 2016. This version includes updates of the original case studies and adds some additional examples of community payment mechanisms from France and Germany. It also includes a summary of the different practices and some potential positives and negatives of the practices presented. 

Download the full report