We have excellent news: Yesterday, the Monitoring Committee of Interreg Baltic Sea Region approved our project application for the extension of the Co2mmunity project. Together with 16 other great projects working on transnational solutions in the Baltic Sea Region, we can continue our work as an Interreg project. The period for the extension is from October 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021.
The extension phase is under the motto: Energize Co2mmunity – Real-life implementation of renewable community energy projects
Please read this short summary about our future plans:
‘Energize Co2mmunity’ is the real-life implementation of renewable community energy projects in the Baltic Sea Region and continues on our successful project Co2mmunity.
The main objective is to increase the production of renewable energy (RE) in the Baltic Sea Region by piloting renewable community energy projects. Citizens facilitate, implement, and co-finance RE 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 RE 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 CE approach.
To achieve this, our eight partners will take up and put to life the two main outputs developed in our 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 (RENCOPs), which were established in the piloting partner regions. They will implement concrete CE 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 will support the concrete piloting and involve regional CE stakeholders.
Energize Co2mmunity will produce two main outputs:
- First, the generation and implementation of ‘six piloted renewable community energy projects’ in different partner regions
- Second, the partnership will produce 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.