Objective:
This topic aims to support actions that foster the collaboration between local and regional authorities and energy communities and/or actions that develop integrated services to facilitate the emergence and growth of community energy projects.
Energy communities can help citizens and local authorities invest in renewables and energy efficiency. The participation of citizens in renewable energy projects may also overcome social acceptance at the local level. Community-owned projects allow citizens to finance sustainable energy investments that deliver local economic benefits, social cohesion, and other priorities such as improving the energy efficiency of housing or reducing energy poverty.
An increasing number of local authorities wish to make sure that more citizens and local communities benefit from the energy transition and play an active role in it. In fact, local government is uniquely well-placed to support, partner and invest, and to provide a positive planning and policy environment to help drive community energy.
Designing adequate public interventions at the local level is key but there is no one-size-fits-all solution to trigger the creation of energy communities locally. The level of public participation and the type of actions required vary significantly depending on the specific context of each city and town. Building on initiatives such as the Covenant of Mayors, there is also a need to strengthen the technical and financial capacities of local actors to support citizen-led initiatives in the field of energy (particularly in Member States with low levels of community energy activity).
Taking sustainable energy projects off the ground can be complex due to the regulatory and policy context (changing national support schemes for renewables, burdensome licensing, heavy administrative procedures, difficulties in coordinating project implementation in atomized markets, etc.). For relatively small and citizen-led actors like energy communities, there are some additional practical challenges such as lack of information, limited access to finance, difficulties aggregating small interventions, difficulties in managing the public participation and engagement, and establishing effective governance and decision-making structures. These hurdles prevent energy communities around Europe from developing their potential. An effective way of tacking this complexity, is by supplying integrated services for the set-up of sustainable energy projects through energy communities.
Scope:This topic will support actions covering at least ONE of the scopes below:
Scope A - Local authorities collaborating with citizen-led-initiatives
Under this scope, proposals should foster the collaboration between local and regional authorities (including energy agencies) and energy communities. This could be done in many ways but all proposals should include at least three of the actions below:
These activities should make use of existing initiatives, networks and platforms as relevant (e.g. Covenant of Mayors, Smart Cities Marketplace).
Scope B - Developing integrated services to support community energy
Under this scope, proposals should support actions that improve market conditions and develop integrated services aimed at reducing complexity, simplifying decision making and stimulating the creation of community energy projects. These services may be implemented by public or private actors in close coordination with local and/or regional authorities in targeted territories. The integrated services designed should lead to local community energy investment pipelines and could cover:
For scopes A and B (where relevant):
Proposals should justify how selected pilots fit either the definition of “renewable energy community” according to the revised Renewable energy directive ((EU) 2018/2001) and/or the definition of “citizen energy community” according to the Directive on common rules for the internal electricity market ((EU) 2019/944).
Proposals could cover any area related to sustainable energy (renewable energy generation, transmission, distribution, citizen-led renovation, energy efficiency, e-mobility, etc.). Proposed activities can also promote (if they wish to) inter-consumers and/or inter-communities trading/sharing of sustainable energy virtual-net-metering, (collective) energy storage solutions, or peer to peer trading.
Proposals should demonstrate the support of the stakeholders which are necessary to ensure the success of the action (in particular, local or regional authorities).
Projects should provide policy feedback to improve public policies, legal and regulatory environments in the field of community energy across Europe.
Proposals replicating existing innovative organisational solutions should justify their choice and show how they will adapt solutions to their local context.
Proposals should demonstrate a high degree of replicability and include a clear action plan to communicate experiences and results towards potential replicators across the EU.
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 1.75 million would allow the specific objectives to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
Expected Impact: