Positive energy districts enabling smart energy communities

Energy transitions concentrated on a neighbourhood or district scale represent a fairly new area of focus at the European (EU) level, aiming to combat future global warming and to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

In the EU energy transition policy agenda, positive energy districts (PEDs) refer to urban areas where more renewable/zero-emissions energy is produced annually than is consumed. PEDs have increasingly grown in recognition and significance, as a societal solution geared towards a low carbon future. The relevant aims include the utilization of 100 PEDs by 2025 and alignment with the EU, which seeks to become a climate-neutral continent by 2050. However, this target raises questions regarding the means of achieving fast and consistent adoption across various socio-technical contexts. Defining the opportunities, challenges, and key issues to address short-term project timelines is vital to implementing fit-for-purpose solutions and bringing PEDs into the mainstream. Proactive knowledge sharing, adaptive learning, and collaboration across disciplines and sectors will bring know-how for understanding the requirements in different contexts. The need for practical approaches to facilitate PED implementation is crucial. This study aims to elucidate the opportunities for and barriers to successful PED design and implementation by compiling and synthesizing experiences from 61 PED projects, identifying key drivers, challenges, enablers, and ethical considerations. In addition, the authors present a framework, consisting of moral principles, which can help present the issues concerning the development and deployment of PED in an ethical context.

© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).