Real-life implementation of renewable community energy projects

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Energize Co2mmunity is the real-life implementation of renewable community energy projects in the Baltic Sea Region and continues on the successful project Co2mmunity. Main objective is to increase the production of renewable energy in the Baltic Sea Region by piloting renewable community energy projects. Citizens facilitate, implement and co-finance renewable energy projects, which can be from different local sources (e.g. solar, wind, biomass, geothermic): This is called “community energy” (CE). Such projects foster the energy transition and have a high social acceptance through citizens´ involvement in the co-development, co-financing and/or co-operating process. Due to the extension project local and regional renewable energy stakeholders in the partner regions, e.g. municipalities, energy and citizen’s associations, and institutions responsible for regional energy planning, will have a higher capacity to produce renewable energy based on the community energy approach. To achieve this, the eight partners will take up and put to life the two main outputs developed in the regular Co2mmunity project, namely “Guidelines for participatory mobilization process to set up Renewable Energy Cooperatives (RENCOP)” and the “Transnational CE partner agreement“. First, the partners will advance the successful work in the Renewable Energy Cooperatives, which were established in the piloting partner regions. They will implement concrete community energy projects that were developed out of these RENCOP activities in the regular project but which still need facilitation to be really implemented. Second, the partners will draw on the transnational partner agreement and deepen the identified cooperation possibilities among the partner regions. They will apply a transnational pairing approach in which frontrunner and follower partners cooperate. With study visits and the exchange of good practices and know-how they support the concrete piloting and involve regional CE stakeholders. Energize Co2mmunity will produce two main outputs: First, the main output and key outcome of Energize Co2mmunity is the generation and implementation of “six piloted renewable community energy projects” in different partner regions. As second main output the partnership produces a “Compilation of findings for CE-solutions” that will consist of success stories, processes and main lessons learnt from experiences in CE piloting in each of the piloting regions. It will be disseminated, along with a storytelling approach, to “renewable energy stakeholders beyond the partnership and international stakeholders”. To sum up, the Energize Co2mmunity project puts to life and broadens real-life community energy projects, based firstly upon the mobilisation processes out of the RENCOPs and secondly upon transnational pairing and piloting support. The renewable energy stakeholders will achieve, as a result, an increase of production and use of sustainable renewable energy in the Baltic Sea Region.

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