Social Enterprises in Community Renewable Energy

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SECRE is a transnational network of renewable energy and social business expertise in Northern Periphery. SECRE works for social enterprises. Social enterprises provide significant amount of net profit to fulfill social goals or invest to own business to enhance social impact. SECRE challenges renewable energy businesses and communities to find and define social goals in the field of renewable energy. SECRE is a strong consortium, which allocates knowledge and resources of the powerful network for needs of Northern European communities in renewable energy production. Renewable Energy In Northern Periphery, renewable energy production is mostly consisting of wind, solar, biomass, wood and hydro energy solutions. In the very northern and rural Europe people are tend to have collective sight for mutual benefits. These communities have the ability to meet the energy need by utilizing the local resources with modern technology and knowledge of SECRE partners. SECRE partners will bring out the potential of communities and social economy by creating a multiple amount of business models for rural community energy production. Synopsis: Social enterprises play a pivotal role in the rural and urban regeneration of the NPP regions. As such it is essential that they are in a position to maximise the opportunities and challenges afforded by renewable energy. SECRE will develop and implement a sustainable service encouraging the uptake of renewable energy activities within social enterprises. The work of the NPP renewable energy cluster has shown that social enterprises face issues such as lack of knowledge transfer, problems developing realistic business models, major funding issues and lack of long term technical support. The strategic SECRE service will, during the project phase, provide appropriate support for social enterprises through the triple helix model. Aim & Objectives: The main objective of SECRE is to develop a long term sustainable service for social enterprises in the area of renewable energy. A social enterprise and community renewable energy knowledge base will be established that contains both data and information on items such as: Business Models Implementation plans Funding schemes Business cases Training material Advisory services Lobbying opportunities To help populate the knowledge base a series of in-depth case studies will be undertaken in the area of renewable energy in social enterprises. These case studies will help identify best practice and provide insights into the topologies and frameworks needed for successful establishment of the knowledge base. To develop effective lobbying and dissemination, an audit of support and policy structures in NPP regions will be undertaken. This will build on work already started in other NPP renewable energy projects. An e-service will be developed using standard decision support tools that builds on the information gathered when establishing the renewable energy knowledge base. A SECRE advisory service will be developed to support the e-service and provide face to face support and advice.

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