Interest and support for decentralized, shared, community-managed, renewable energy systems has been growing in different countries. In Montreal, local energy projects have emerged despite the fact that the Quebec energy portrait is largely dominated by hydroelectric power and offers a particular context for energy projects, especially when it comes to decentralized renewable energy. Through a series of interviews with initiators of shared geothermal projects, we study one factor for their emergence which is still understudied in the literature – the pre-existing collective action spaces contributing to the development of novel energy initiatives. We begin by presenting the Quebec context for energy provision and the limitations of local authorities. We then follow with a discussion of the energy community and the role of existing collective action spaces. Two initiatives are finally presented and compared to better understand their trajectories in relation to the type of collective action spaces on which they were built. Our results show that, while pre-existing structures and spaces of collective action have helped with the emergence of these initiatives, they have also affected their trajectories and the challenges they face.