Energy communities in a transnational deliberative framework: from local energy democracy to global ecological deliberation

This article reconceptualizes energy communities (ECs) within a transnational deliberative framework. ECs are usually discussed as local actors, instruments of renewable deployment, or sites of grassroots participation. This article treats them as potential nodes in a multi-scalar deliberative system that links local energy governance to wider processes of democratic and ecological justification. It argues that ECs can claim robust democratic legitimacy when democratic self-rule, social inclusion, and ecological responsibility are institutionally connected through deliberative practices. On this basis, the article develops a normative model in which ecological thresholds function as enabling constraints on collective choice: they orient local decisions towards environmental limits, supply-chain responsibilities, and intergenerational duties while remaining open to public contestation and revision. The article then diagnoses recurrent deficits in current EC practice, including thin participation, social selectivity, technocratic drift, localism, and ecological underspecification, and interprets them as problems of democratic legitimacy. From this diagnosis, it derives design criteria for EC governance. Finally, the article situates ECs within a transnational deliberative system understood as a concrete utopia: a regulative horizon grounded in partial institutional possibilities. If connected through federations, municipal networks, civil-society coalitions, shared ecological baselines, and public records of justification, ECs can circulate publicly defensible claims across contexts and contribute to democratic capacities beyond the energy domain. In this sense, ECs can link local self-government with transnational responsibility in the governance of the energy transition.