Inside an Irish Local Energy Community: A new citizen energy journey

In Balbriggan (IE), a town located 35 kilometres north of Dublin City, a Local Energy Community (LEC) is beginning a new chapter in citizen-led climate action. Working with and for residents, this initiative aims to reshape how energy is produced, used, and shared at the community level.

Balbriggan is the youngest and most ethnically diverse large town in Ireland. Currently, around half of all homes rely on individual gas boilers for heating, highlighting both the scale of the decarbonisation challenge and the opportunity for change.

This change is impulsed by the Balbriggan Sustainable Energy Community (SEC), a citizen-led group collaborating closely with its regional authority, Fingal County Council and CODEMA, Dublin’s Energy Agency. Together, they are working towards achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 within a defined area of Balbriggan. This designated decarbonised zone provides a unique opportunity to co-create climate solutions, reduce local energy demand, and encourage active participation from residents, businesses, and community organisations.

Building the Local Energy Community progressively

In Ireland, LECs are known as Sustainable Energy Communities (SECs). The Balbriggan SEC is still in its early stages. It is a small, volunteer-run organisation and has been legally registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee since 2021. Fingal County Council has recently formalised its collaboration with the SEC through the Our Balbriggan Sustainability, Climate Action and Biodiversity Committee, strengthening ties between the community group and the local authority.

As a young and relatively small organisation, the SEC is continuing to build its capacity. Its work currently focuses on practical, community-facing projects such as solar energy installations, energy-sharing schemes, and home retrofit initiatives. Fingal County Council complements this work by addressing system-level needs, including access to data, monitoring tools, and technical expertise. Together, the partners are developing a clearer governance framework to define roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes.

A ‘not just for Christmas’ wish list: What is needed to take the partnership further

To ensure this collaboration is sustainable over the long term, both the SEC and the local authority have identified several key needs.

Wish 1: Stronger capacity and more stable funding

The SEC faces significant challenges due to limited human and financial resources. With a heavy reliance on volunteers, it is difficult to scale up activities or maintain momentum over time. To deliver larger and more complex projects, the SEC needs dedicated full-time staff and a more stable funding model. At present, it depends largely on short-term grants and lacks a steady income stream or well-established business model to support long-term planning. Fingal County Council also requires more reliable funding and clearer investment structures to move from planning into large-scale implementation. Without predictable financial resources, it is difficult for the Council to fully deliver or expand community energy initiatives.

Wish 2: Supportive policies and clear regulatory frameworks

There is a clear need for greater clarity around the legal and regulatory frameworks governing decarbonising zones and community energy initiatives. For the SEC, the absence of a specific legal status for energy cooperatives in Ireland makes national recognition and engagement more challenging.

Fingal County Council similarly faces uncertainty regarding the scope of local authority involvement in community energy projects. This is compounded by a complex governance landscape, where responsibilities are distributed across multiple institutions, policy change can be slow, and Ireland’s highly centralised energy system can limit local action.

Stronger support from elected councillors would help the SEC to influence policy development. For the Council, the key challenge lies in aligning national policy objectives with regional responsibilities and local ambitions into a single, coherent, and workable framework.

Wish 3: Building trust and ensuring inclusive participation

Building trust between institutions and local communities is another critical challenge. Some residents, particularly those from underrepresented or marginalised groups, may feel excluded from decision-making processes. This can limit participation and reduce the overall impact of local energy projects.

Both the SEC and Fingal County Council emphasise the importance of inclusive and meaningful engagement. This includes addressing language barriers, reaching households affected by energy poverty, actively involving groups that are often overlooked, and avoiding engagement fatigue. For the SEC, maintaining trust among volunteers and sustaining grassroots involvement is essential. For the Council, the challenge is to engage a broad cross-section of the community, including voices that have not traditionally been heard, and to ensure that shared community energy goals genuinely reflect local needs and aspirations.

More stories of partnerships between local energy communities and local or regional authorities here