Abstract

The imperatives of sustainability and consumption control driven by energy transition are leading to the emergence of projects based on collaborative consumption, the sharing of spaces and the adoption of ecological practices. This impetus has led to an increasingly important integration of collective self-consumption – part of the «energy community» model – into participatory housing projects, where the objectives of sharing spaces and adopting a sustainable lifestyle are articulated with the organisation of a community governance. Through an ethnographic qualitative survey method, we analyse the articulation between energy production/consumption, community organisation and the practice of spaces at the micro-local level. Through the analysis of two energy communities in participatory housing in France and in Switzerland, we show that the consumption and governance practices of collective self-consumption operations cannot be developed without spatial anchoring at a local level.