Addressing Energy Poverty in the Energy Community: Assessment of Energy, Environmental, Economic, and Social Benefits for an Italian Residential Case Study

Although a clear definition of energy poverty has not been reported in the scientific literature or in general energy directives, this condition affects about 10% of European people. During the last three years, the COVID-19 pandemic combined with the increase in energy bill costs due to energy conflicts has determined the increment of energy poverty. The Renewable Energy Directive, that defines a new legal entity named Renewable Energy Community as a new end-users’ organization, recognizes the chance for low-income households to benefit from being able to access affordable energy tariffs and energy efficiency measures thanks to these new entities. Thus, this paper analyses the energy, economic, and environmental performances of a renewable energy community composed of three residential users distributed in two buildings located in the south of Italy, and one of these buildings is equipped by a rooftop photovoltaic plant. The plants were modelled and simulated through HOMERPRO simulation software while the building energy loads are real and were imported from an energy distributor dataset and were processed in the MATLAB simulation interface. The analysis concerned the comparison of the energy performance achieved by one case in which no renewable plants were installed, and by another case in which the end-users took part in the renewable energy community by sharing the photovoltaic “produced” electricity. The investigation was conducted in terms of the quantity of electricity imported from the power grid and consumed on-site, the avoided emissions, and the operating costs. The business plan has been devoted to defining the advantages of the energy community for vulnerable end-users in a popular neighborhood council estate by evaluating the social energy poverty indexes. The results showed that through the renewable energy community, a mitigation of energy poverty is obtained within a range of 12–16%.