Energy communities (ECs) play a role in the transition towards a low-carbon economy by 2050 and receive increasing attention from stakeholders within the energy sector. To foster ECs, transition management (TM) is a promising managerial approach to steer and guide the transition towards more sustainable practices. However, TM lacks a consistent methodology that addresses the criticism of the current application. To investigate what a structured and replicable TM approach for ECs can look like, this paper applies the multi-actor multi-criteria analysis (MAMCA), a participative multi-criteria decision method, to a case study EC in the Netherlands involving various stakeholders. The impact of the application on power relations, the political sphere, sustainability conceptualization, guidance of transitions, and representation was analyzed. MAMCA was found useful for multi-stakeholder settings seen in potential ECs, offering a unifying methodology for the practical application of TM. In the EC setting, the added value of MAMCA within TM lies more in the social representation, insight into stakeholder viewpoints, and communication rather than in final decision-making.

As they foster active participation in their daily operations, energy communities (ECs) are often regarded as important tools for the empowerment of civil stakeholders in the energy system. To ensure the incorporation of stakeholder needs, participation must also be guaranteed throughout the design phase of the EC. Despite a general consensus on the importance of stakeholder engagement in the setup of sustainability-fostering projects, the impact of engagement initiatives often goes unassessed. This makes it difficult to determine whether their application advances stakeholder interest.