UNfolding Ambitious and Innovative Community Energy financing schemes

ongoing

In France, 110 billion euro are needed every year by 2030 to fund the clean energy transition. Engaging citizens is key to achieve this transition, and mobilising private finance is another necessary challenge to win. Energy communities hold substantial promise to win these challenges in France and across Europe, but they still face specific, acute financing barriers. Yet, community-based financing schemes, strengthened by the Life-CET Innofin ACCE project, are showing the way to tackle these barriers. The UNAICE project, led by Énergie Partagée —the national network leader for energy communities in France— will build upon ACCE's results to standardize and bundle a comprehensive set of 8 community energy financing schemes. It will extensively cover financing needs from development to pre-construction and realisation, scale up these replicable solutions to unprecedented levels, and widely disseminate skills and tools to European partners for further implementation. UNAICE will mobilise citizen finance to fund and complete 50 million euros worth of projects in energy communities. This will expand energy communities' development horizons, and UNAICE's outcomes will sustain this horizon wide open after the project ends. UNAICE will strengthen the capacities of local partners, specifically of 40 growing second-order energy communities, citizen-led operators, and blended funds. It will also support them in achieving their social impact ambitions and empower 1 000 citizens through improved governance and enhanced capacities. This will ratchet stakeholder's abilities to deliver larger investment pipelines and create jobs, generating further growth for energy communities. UNAICE will engage with institutions to lower regulatory and structural barriers, advance an enabling framework, and extensively share lessons learnt to foster a cost-efficient use of public funds. This will support the long-term development of energy communities, a key objective and lever of EU policies.