Powering Community Energy Investments in Catalonia

ongoing

POWER2PPL is a Project Development Assistance (PDA) project for Catalonia, Spain, which will support public, private, citizen and social promoters of sustainable energy investments in the preparation and implementation of their projects. More specifically, the PDA services will offer technical expertise including engineering, financial, and legal support. The project provides PDA assistance in order to overcome barriers, raise investment, comply with legislation and policy, increase awareness of developments and opportunities in sustainable energy sectors and awareness of society for the advantages of such investments, including citizen-led renewable energy communities (REC). The project builds on 2 very successful previous H2020 PDA projects developed in Portugal (BundleUP, each with +40m€ of documented investment deployed in the public and private sectors) and aims to transpose the learning and continue their legacy and established networks, by focusing on fostering REC, building renovation, and the role of crowdfunding and citizen investment and ownership. To this avail, the project is coordinated by the leading European crowdlending platform for sustainability, Goparity, based in Lisbon and Barcelona, CCOSONA, the energy agency of the Osona region, which supports the municipalities and OECOOP, the umbrella cooperative that supports all citizen and cooperative initiatives in the region, capacitating them and providing PDA support. The project aims to deploy investments in sustainable energy, currently with 71 referenced projects, including on-roof and on-ground solar PV and mini hydro for collective self-consumption by private and public promoters and REC, and support for heat pump installation in public buildings, totaling an expected investment of over 55M€. The proposal has received wide support from all relevant local stakeholders, solidly documented with Letters of Support.