Author: Michael Anranter

TANDEMS sister projects: Breaking barriers, building bridges in LIFE LOOP

At the heart of the LIFE LOOP project lies a vision for a 100% community-led renewable energy transition. Despite the commendable efforts of citizen energy cooperatives and local authorities, many municipalities face significant challenges in prioritizing clean community energy. These challenges are both internal and external, making it difficult to push forward with such essential initiatives. The LIFE LOOP project aims to break these barriers by raising awareness about the benefits of community energy and equipping municipalities with the capacity to initiate new energy projects, especially in regions where the community approach is undervalued.

Pioneering progress: from pilot sites to replication

LIFE LOOP’s pilot sites are located in Crete, Greece; Zagreb, Croatia; and Bistrița, Romania. These sites serve as testing grounds for the project’s initiatives, which will later be replicated in Sardinia, Italy; Gabrovo, Bulgaria (which is also a pilot site in the TANDEMS project); Tulcea, Romania; and Cyprus.

Strategies for success: building capacity, raising awareness, and fostering collaboration

To achieve its objectives, LIFE LOOP combines EU-wide and local activities that involve municipalities, energy cooperatives, citizens, and other stakeholders. The project focuses on building capacity by providing training and resources to local authorities and citizen groups, empowering them to start and manage energy projects. Raising awareness is another critical component, with targeted campaigns designed to highlight the benefits of community energy and the potential for local sustainable energy initiatives. At the heart of the LIFE LOOP project stands the community energy accreditation scheme. This program is designed to bridge the knowledge gap by offering municipalities online training sessions on community energy topics and by allowing them to self-assess their current community energy support. By participating, municipalities gain access to valuable online resources and a networking platform that facilitates effective partnerships between municipalities, energy communities, and citizen-led initiatives.

Driving change: catalyzing collaboration for implementing local energy and climate plans

By putting people at the heart of the clean energy transition, LIFE LOOP aims to catalyze significant change. Successful community energy projects and the collaboration between citizens and local authorities can increase social acceptance of renewable energy projects, boost local economies by keeping money within the community and creating jobs, and enhance energy resilience through energy efficiency and sustainable practices.

Navigating challenges, embracing opportunities

However, the journey is not without challenges. Regulatory barriers, funding constraints, and limited awareness among citizens and authorities can hinder progress. Yet, these challenges also present opportunities. Successful pilot projects can provide evidence to shape supportive policies, while raising awareness can drive citizen interest and participation in energy projects. Expanding successful models to new regions can amplify the project’s impact.

Key lessons learned: collaboration, communication, and inclusivity

Key lessons from LIFE LOOP highlight the importance of collaboration, tailored communication, and inclusive practices. Strong partnerships between diverse stakeholders are essential for the success of community energy projects. Effective outreach strategies must consider regional contexts and specific audience needs, and gender-just approaches enhance the effectiveness and reach of energy initiatives. Local engagement from the outset ensures greater acceptance and sustainability, although working with municipalities requires patience and hands-on activities that demand minimal time from local authority representatives.

Why does it make sense to set up an Energy community?

Colourful pins on a paper by MetsikGarden on Pixabay

As the world becomes more conscious of the ramifications of environmental pollution, the need for a greener and more sustainable energy system has never been more obvious. As a result, communities across the globe have started exploring alternative energy solutions to reduce their carbon footprint while saving costs on energy bills. One practical solution to achieving this is setting up an energy community. An energy community is a group of people, small businesses, and organizations that collaborate to generate, buy, and manage energy from renewable sources. The benefits of setting up an energy community are vast. Here are some reasons why it makes sense to take the initiative.

1. Cost savings

One of the most significant benefits of setting up an energy community is cost savings. By pooling resources, energy consumers can reduce the cost of installing and maintaining renewable energy infrastructure, and this translates to reduced energy costs for its members.

2. Decreased dependence on traditional energy sources

The world’s reliance on fossil fuels for energy generation is rapidly depleting as resources diminish, and the costs associated with conventional energy sources increase. Energy communities enable communities to generate their energy from renewable sources while reducing dependency on traditional energy sources.

3. Economic benefits

Energy communities create new jobs, generate revenue, promote local investment, and keep energy money within the community. Also, energy communities decrease multiple dependencies addressing key resources. This contributes to a location’s long-term attractiveness in the global competition between cities and regions.

4. Strengthened communities

Energy communities require collaboration and the active participation of their members, leading to improved community involvement and unparalleled community development. Some of the best methods for participation start from simply advising citizens. Others start from municipalities that already gain the citizens’ trust. Whatever approach they follow, energy communities result in enhanced knowledge exchange and a more resilient social texture.

In conclusion, setting up an energy community is a smart sustainable solution tackling the challenges of today’s world. It provides numerous benefits, including cost savings, decreased dependence on traditional energy sources and energy providers, environmental benefits, promotes community involvement, and economic benefits. With a collaborative effort and proper planning, energy communities can successfully achieve their sustainability goals. By doing so they lead the path to a decentralised green future.

Picture: Colourful pins on paper by MetsikGarden on Pixabay.

Scaling-up Energy Communities

Energy communities have become a popular concept that has been gaining momentum in recent years. These communities are creating a sustainable future by using renewable energy sources and reducing their dependence on fossil fuels. Scaling up these communities can be challenging, but it is necessary to make a significant impact. In this blog post, we discuss what is necessary to scale up energy communities and some examples of successful scaling.

Funding

To scale up energy communities, funding is essential. Many communities do not have the financial resources to invest in renewable energy sources or hire professionals to manage their systems. Governments and private investors must provide resources to develop and maintain community energy projects. Grants, loans, and other incentives are necessary to help finance these projects. What shall be considered from an energy communities point of view is to be clear about pricing to avoid funding gaps. Such funding gaps result from cheap energy supply or spikes in costs for maintenance necessary for the operation of renewable energy plants.

Public support

Public support is critical to scaling up energy communities. Residents must be aware of the benefits of renewable energy and the importance of reducing carbon emissions. Interviews with TANDEMS partners have shown that public support varies over time. It is not a constant that energy communities could build on. Also, the interviews have shown that citizens are more likely to kick off interaction with energy communities if approached by a representative whom they can identify with. Finally, communities must educate their residents on the benefits and challenges of renewable energy in the long term. When people understand the benefits, they are more likely to support community energy projects in their upscaling.

Technical expertise

Scaling up energy communities requires technical expertise to plan, design and implement renewable energy systems. This can be achieved using external partners or sustainability consultants such as Robin Doet; a company that develops and supervises sustainability projects. Indeed it provides advice on policy and pushes potential policy changes to enable the creation of energy communities. 

Furthermore, training programs build local expertise on how to ensure the sustainability of energy communities. This is exactly why in TANDEMS we implement train-the-trainer workshops.

Conclusion

Scaling up energy communities is essential to achieve a sustainable future. It requires funding, public support, and technical expertise. Examples of successful scaling demonstrate the potential to build such a cleaner and greener future. Day by day there are more people being involved in community-driven energy supply. So long this is true for Northern America and Europe. To facilitate a just energy transition for all, we should not forget about promoting decentralized and non-profit approaches to energy supply in the global South. The vision must be to ensure all future generations can afford and enjoy a cleaner and more sustainable tomorrow.

Picture: Solarstrom by Solarimo auf Pixabay 

Secrets of Energy Sharing

Bild von Anemone123 auf Pixabay

Considering the recent energy crisis and rising energy prices, the topic of affordable energy has become more prevalent than ever. Companies, governments, and individuals explore actions to reduce energy consumption. They took up the challenge of driving the energy transition, and the search for alternative sources of energy could comprise. Although the media presents a well-rounded and balanced debate, still too little space is given to energy communities (EC) and the role of governments and policies in enabling the creation of ECs in Europe.  

Why are community-led projects important? 

Within the complex and nowadays uncertain world of energy production concepts such as citizen-led, collective, or equal citizen participation can sound intimidating and daunting. Considering that the process of normalizing energy communities is still quite new, these reactions are understandable. This paper, by students from business management and environmental studies, shines a light on the concept of energy communities, which are based on a collaboration between citizens, governments, and businesses for a clean energy transition. Even though these initiatives are not so popularized, they are, as pointed out by Sara Giovanni from Energy Cities a European learning community for future-proof cities, making a great contribution to fight climate change. 

In fact, currently, the speed of climate change is accelerating so fast that, according to Elmqvist et al., we must ready ourselves to enter an age of unprecedented transformative solutions, where confusion and vagueness is avoided. Energy communities, with their participatory and transparent information exchange, give power to the people themselves. This leads to, as stated by Feinberg et al, community resilience and better adaptability to socio-ecological issues. 

What are some of the current challenges?

Prominent issues within the process of promotion of energy communities are first the lack of easy access to information, which means a need for an active search, which is difficult without having any prior knowledge. Another problem, as pointed out by Wahlund and Palm from Lund University, is the bias towards a decentralized energy model and an underrepresentation of energy communities within the mainstream media. What follows, as presented by the results of this study from two Universities in the Netherlands, is the lack of trust of the wider public towards EC’s and thus an indifference towards taking an active role in the energy transition. 

Additionally, as claimed by Feinberg et al, energy communities require social cohesion, trust, and clear communication, which can sometimes prove difficult in a globalised world. With masses of people continuously changing their place of living, cooperative action must have better organisation, more proactivity, and increased attentiveness. Knowledge exchange and knowledge distribution, as believed by John S. Edwards from Aston University in Birmingham, are also factors that urgently need development. The way information circulated among communities, as maintained by William King in his Ph.D research at Coventry University, should take into consideration theoretical frameworks, type of language used, and more approachable glossary, which can inspire citizen science.  

What are some of the existing enabling frameworks? 

On the brighter side, however, for those who already have sprouts of interest in EC’s there are various sources including this repository from European Federation for Agencies and Regions for Energy and Environment. The repository aims to give an insight into not only the examples but also various publications and updates related to Energy Communities. Another, more general example of an informative database is the Projects for Public Spaces website, which brings together a wide array of community-led projects from all over the world.  

Furthermore, considering the participative aspect of ECs, members of energy communities themselves are actors, who hold the biggest levers of change. Citizens with an in-depth understanding of the circumstances of their networks and neighbors are often involved in energy community projects already. This has resulted, as presented by this research paper from the University of Bologna, in quite a large number of attempts being made in order to create EC’s and improve communication between them. Many studies, like this one, have also been conducted in order to analyse new methods of knowledge sharing within the energy industry and changes, which can be made to adjust the sector to 21st-century standards. 

Although energy transition is a well-established and urgent matter, it is still in many aspects in its early stages. This is why projects like TANDEMS focuses on establishing methods of mainstreaming this niche market and focuses on increasing the speed with which current traditional and centralized energy systems are transformed into a community-led, collaborative effort.  

Picture by Anemone123 on Pixabay.

5 Reasons Why Energy Communities Give Power to the People

Energy communities are groups of people that come together to collectively generate, store, and manage energy. Often, they are formed with the aim of increasing access to renewable energy sources such as solar panels, wind turbines, and biogas generators, lowering energy costs, and finally reducing a neighbourhood’s impact on the environment. By pooling their resources, knowledge, and experience, energy communities create more sustainable and resilient energy systems than would be possible at the individual level. They may also invest in energy storage technologies such as batteries, which allow them to capture excess energy and use it later when demand is higher. By doing so, energy communities reduce their reliance on traditional energy sources and lower their carbon footprint. 

Here are five reasons why energy communities allow people to take back control of their energy sources and become independent energy providers and consumers.  

1. Energy communities decrease energy costs

In an energy market dominated by large-scale players, energy communities building on renewable energy sources have a great potential to significantly reduce the members’ energy bills. Building on the collective rather than the individual, the prices for both, energy production and purchase are lower. Some energy communities produce and sell to customers at wholesale prices. For example, Helsingin Energia, an energy community in Helsinki, Finland, offers electricity tariffs up to 25% cheaper than traditional local energy providers. That’s as if you would get electricity but without paying VAT. 

2. Energy communities allow members to have a say in how their energy is produced and distributed 

With the gas and electricity shortage expected for winter 2022/2023, an increasing amount of people have become aware of the fact, that they do not really have a say about their electricity. Indeed, many have experienced a maximum of dependency. This is less true for people engaged in energy communities. As members they can actively participate in decision-making processes – the very basis for ‘controlling’ or ‘being in power’ of their own energy usage. To pick yet another example from outside the TANDEMs project, the Samso Energy Academy in Denmark empowers community members to own and operate wind turbines, solar panels, and district heating systems. Have a look at their website; they have an inspiring collection of talks on sustainable energy and energy communities! 

3. Energy communities encourage the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydropower

It is untrue to assume that we will have to wait for years until we have something to gain from cutting CO2 emissions. As a matter of fact, every reduction of the reliance on non-renewable sources for energy production that contributes to a cleaner planet today gives a little more autonomy for other decisions that will be pressing in the upcoming years. Surely, power to the people might be a quite general claim at this stake. It is not said that the newly evolved scope for action plays out in your energy community. To those arguing reducing here is nonsense while Asian countries increase air pollution: Do you really believe atmosphere, air, and pollution stop at the border? 

4. Energy communities encourage energy efficiency by providing members with advice and support to reduce their energy consumption

Knowledge is power and luckily there are many advisors and organisations, which navigate citizens through setting up energy communities. For instance, French Energies POSIT’IF offers free energy audits to its community members and provides personalised recommendations on how to reduce energy usage. Other projects, such as Newcomer – Exploring New Energy Communities, assess the regulatory, institutional, and social conditions to facilitate learnings on a meta, or more precisely, supra-local level. 

5. Energy Communities create jobs 

We’ve started with economy. We end with economy. Hovering over the EU Centres for Development of Vocational Training map of occupation needs in Europe, you’ll quickly find out that the only country in Europe where mining personnel is still hired is Bulgaria. For Czechia and the Northwest region, a 2021 published study of the European Greens (that are obviously not the representatives of coal mining industries) expect 10,000 jobs in the mining sector to be soon replaced by more than 20,000 jobs in renewable energy. The reason: decentral energy harvesting. Indeed, energy communities provide job opportunities for residents in various areas such as installation, maintenance, and customer service. 

Overall, energy communities empower citizens by giving them control over their energy usage. It seems almost ridiculous to assume, they have the potential to empower people. Instead, they do so on an everyday basis already. Energy communities create jobs and decrease the cost of energy. They allow for a minimum scope of action and open windows of opportunity to fight climate change. Finally, they give communities a voice and reduce dependency. The latter is the very essence of empowerment.

Image by Cornell Frühauf from Pixabay

Deviating Legal Frameworks for Energy Communities in Europe

Windmill and a wind turbine on a Field. Photo by Mike van Schoonderwalt. Url: https://www.pexels.com/photo/windmill-and-a-wind-turbine-on-a-field-5511491/

Energy communities have gained momentum in Europe in recent years. They are considered as crucial tools in meeting the goals of the European Union’s clean energy transition, such as improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. However, there appears to be a lack of a uniform legal framework among European Union member states for energy communities, raising some concerns. This article will explore the deviating legal frameworks that are in place for energy communities all over Europe and suggest how deviations might be overcome.

What are Energy Communities?

Energy communities are groups of individuals or organizations that come together and jointly develop, manage, or own energy projects in their community. Actually, the European Union provides two definitions of energy communities: „Citizen Energy Communities“ and „Renewable Energy Communities.“ Both definitions put an emphasis on participation and effective control by citizens, local authorities, and smaller businesses. Large-scale energy providers and industries are not included in these definitions. In energy communities, members pool their financial resources to invest in renewable energy projects such as solar or wind power. Energy produced by these projects is sold back to the grid, and profits are returned to the members. An already existing example of this, which is also a TANDEMS pilot project, is in Otterbeek, Mechelen (Belgium). It is an energy community set up in a social housing area by Klimaan. 

The Problem of Deviating Legal Frameworks

Energy communities’ participation in the clean energy transition requires a supportive legal framework, which should be designed, considering the criteria of simple and clear administrative procedures, non-discrimination of actors, legal certainty and predictability of the framework, the stability of remuneration, and financing possibilities. Within the European Union, the regulatory framework and support for energy communities depend on individual country policies. In some countries, policies provide little or no support, while in others, policies are more supportive, providing some significant financial incentives. To better grasp the diversity of the policy frameworks enabling energy communities in Europe, it is recommendable to have a look at the RESCoop Transposition Tracker. It is easily accessible through a color-coded map and provides detailed information about each member state. Finally, it shows that there is a lack of uniformity or standardization in the legal framework surrounding energy communities in Europe.

Let‘s pin that down. For instance, in Germany, renewable energy cooperatives and citizen energy partnerships are widely used, with the strong backing of the Renewable Energy Act, which provides incentives such as feed-in tariffs and priority access to the grid for renewable energy producers. In contrast, in Italy, although there is a policy for Energy Communities, it’s not as supportive in terms of the incentives it provides. Similarly, in Portugal, there is no specific law for Energy Communities, and therefore, Energy Communities are not recognized legally. To this end, the deviations in the legal framework across EU Member states pose a challenge for cross-country collaboration in general, but also for the TANDEMS project. 

Possible Solutions to Deviations in Legal Framework

Deviating legal frameworks have been identified as a major obstacle for the realization of renewable energy projects in energy communities. Common legal standards might boost the development of energy communities. At the same time, they might reduce flexibility to react on local specificities, landscapes and community structures. A top-down, one-size-fits-all approach is likely to fail.

To overcome deviations in the legal framework, EU member states should thus develop a regulatory framework that encourages the development of local energy communities. This action may be led by the European Commission or Parliament – what is important though, is to ensure all relevant stakeholders (that are citizens not industries) have a say. The aim of such a framework should be to remove existing barriers and provide supportive measures that incentivize the development of energy communities. It should encourage cross-border cooperation and incentivize participation in the clean energy transition. 

Photo by Mike van Schoonderwalt