Before There Were Rules, There Were Pioneers

When the European Union’s Clean Energy Package was still in draft form, a handful of organisations in Croatia were already trying to make energy communities work — without a legal basis to stand on. The Green Energy Cooperative (ZEZ) operated through improvised civic financing, building a model from scratch. At the same time, EUKI’s project Krk Energy set out to scale household solar installations on the island of Krk in the northern Adriatic. It trained installers and advised citizens on what a decarbonised future for their island could look like. These were not marginal experiments. They were proof that the demand was there, long before the law caught up.

EU Law Opens a Window— and EUKI Projects Stepped Through it

The Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) and the Internal Electricity Market Directive gave Croatia a hard deadline: transpose EU rules on energy communities into national law. Croatia met that deadline in October 2021, passing both the Electricity Market Act and the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) Act. But legislation on paper is rarely the same as legislation in practice. The 2023 published Uredbe or “rulebook implementing energy-community provisions” restricted eligible legal forms more than EU law required. Permit procedures at the Croatian Energy Regulatory Agency (Hrvatska Energetska Regulatorna Agencija, HERA) remained administratively heavy. Most critically, Croatian Electric Power Industry – Distribution System Operator (Hrvatska elektroprivreda – Operator distribucijskog sustava, HEP ODS) had not built the billing infrastructure needed to actually allow energy sharing between community members. The framework existed — the plumbing did not. This is precisely where EUKI projects made their mark. Solar Adria mapped solar potential across the region and developed planning tools and feasibility templates that municipalities could use immediately. Balkan Solar Roofs built local energy community roadmaps, trained municipal staff, and mobilised citizens and small businesses — most visibly through close collaboration with the town of Poreč in Istria County. These were not awareness campaigns. They were technical and institutional groundwork, laid in anticipation of a system that had not yet fully arrived.

Building the Movement that Builds the Policy

Launched in December 2022, the project SunSharing – Supporting Solar Energy Communities in SEE promoted photovoltaic-based energy communities and crowdfunding models across Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece and North Macedonia. In Croatia, the team went further: they co-founded the Forum for Energy Communities, an interest group now representing over 18 organisations. The Forum has become the central advocacy platform for policy coordination with ministries, HERA and HEP — and it produces practical guidebooks for local authorities wanting to start their own communities. EUKI project LoGyCo – Setting Basis for the Establishment of LOcal Citizen EnerGY COmmunities contributed to the same ecosystem, empowering municipalities in Croatia and Serbia to become energy prosumers through capacity-building on legislative, technical and financial topics. Working with two pilot municipalities — including Ivanić-Grad in Zagreb County — and drawing on the German town of Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm as a model, it developed implementation guidelines that local governments can adapt and apply. The result, across all these projects, is a community that did not wait for the system to be perfect before building expertise, networks and political relationships within it.

Where Things Stand — and Where they are Heading

The May 2025 amendments to the RES Act represent the most significant legislative milestone yet: renewable energy communities are now formally enshrined in Croatian law, and the process for establishing them has been simplified. As of early 2026, four communities are officially registered. The number is modest, and the key infrastructure barrier — HEP ODS’s energy-sharing billing system — remains unresolved. But the foundation built over a decade is solid: trained installers, equipped municipalities, an active advocacy forum, mapped solar potential, and thousands of citizens who have seen what an energy community can look like up close.

Croatia began this journey with sun on its rooftops and a legal void underneath. Today, the void is narrowing — slowly, unevenly, but with growing civic force behind it. When the grid infrastructure finally follows the law, and the law finally follows the ambition of the communities that came first, the country will be ready. The people already are.