Powering up communities: cross-sector learnings and a social finance typology for community-led renewable energy (CRE) infrastructure

British Columbia depends largely on crown corporations to provide reliable, clean electricity. However, this centralized structure offers few incentives for communities to own and operate their own sustainable infrastructure. The goal of this research is to (1) understand how community-led renewable energy (CRE) advocates navigate the structural, institutional, and community conditions that shape community-led sustainable infrastructure in BC, and (2) to identify finance mechanisms that enable socially equitable and context-appropriate CRE projects. Thematic analysis of ten semi‑structured interviews with CRE project advocates reveals four recurring dimensions that shape CRE efforts: contextual conditions, community dynamics, governance structures, and project outcomes. Structural barriers to CRE development in BC include provincial identity narratives, limited policy supports, high costs, and uneven local capacity, and project-level dynamics include social trust, framing, and access to educational resources. Advocates navigated structural, technological, financial, and organizational constraints in CRE development processes by drawing on strategies developed outside the energy sector. In particular, they found that CRE projects gain momentum when community champions, strong civic capacity, people power, energy literacy, funding supports, and organizing strategies from outside the energy sector are present. Although many CRE initiatives must initially conform to existing institutional expectations, advocates can transform these efforts by applying legal structures and finance mechanisms from non-energy sectors. Based on a literature review of the academic and grey literature on social finance mechanisms, this work also proposes a dual‑axis typology that links community goals and project scale to appropriate social finance mechanisms. This typology identifies financing approaches that can reduce barriers to community ownership, strengthen participation, and distribute economic, social, and governance benefits more equitably. The aim of this thesis is to identify key barriers and enabling conditions of CRE development in BC and to propose strategies to help planners and advocates develop community-led sustainable infrastructure.