Capacity-building for municipal energy entrepreneurs with a social purpose
PRESENTATIONS
Focus 1: Business models
- The business models in the POWER UP project – Gabriele Fragonese, Sinloc
- Locally and collectively produced solar energy in Rome – Patrick Maurelli, Sapienza Citera
- Energy solidarity schemes all over Europe – Heleen Schockaert, RESCoop.eu
Focus 2: Public policy and legal frameworks: challenges for municipalities to implementing solutions to alleviate energy poverty
- Regulatory frameworks for energy communities and energy poverty: Do they line up? – Heleen Schockaert, RESCoop.eu
- Drivers and barriers to energy community projects at national and local levels– Klervi Kerneis, Jacques Delors Institute (full report here)
- Public procurement for energy services: challenges and opportunities in Valencia – Arturo Zea, Valencia Clima i Energia
Focus 3: The co-creation challenge & engagement strategies
This session was a conversation with two experts working in the field, one on shared renewable energy, the other on shared self-renovation:
- Fien Vanderbeke, City of Eeklo (POWER UP project pilot) – talking about the Eeklo experience in engaging with households in vulnerable situations to create social cooperative shares
- Sabrine Boudjemline, Les 7 Vents (CEES project pilot) – talking about how to identify and engage with people and professionals to make an innovative shared, supported self-consumption scheme work
“Can we really ask citizens’ initiatives like Energy Communities to take the burden of tackling social issues and energy poverty? There is a strong need for public support, incentives and enablers to help them make it”.
Arturo Zea, Valencia Clima i Energia (on behalf of POWER UP)
“Because of a lack of diversity in energy communities, there is also often a lack of understanding what people in vulnerable situations want.”
Klervi Kerneis, Jacques Delors Institute (on behalf of CEES)
Take-aways
The recent energy crisis taught us more than ever, that energy should be affordable.
But not only: each and every citizen, no matter their level of education, health, income and others should understand to which extent they can decide on energy matters in their lives.
And this means, we must think energy services also through the vulnerability lense as of the start. How can we do this as of the beginning, despite a very delayed transposition of the EU legislation in Member States? Many places all over Europe (notably the pilots in POWER UP, CEES and Sun4All) do experiment ways to design energy services and products that are made also with and for those vulnerable customers. Their experience proves that we need to
- Clearly define who invests and who benefits through solid business models
- Better connect energy and social policies, energy business and social business à without putting a too big load on energy communities’ shoulders
- Define transparent and clear selection processes of beneficiaries (energy poor or others) – public procurement challenge
- Increase skilled staff in municipalities and raise awareness of other players on the topic
- Engaging vulnerable people is not only about empowerment, but a lot about learning from them
Background
As the energy crisis touches more and more people, it becomes even more important to empower people in vulnerable situations to take ownership and benefit from renewable energy production. The previous winter has been hard. As summer comes in, different, but similar challenges lie ahead of certain parts of the population: people will suffer major hardship because of extreme heat or other weather disasters. The situation is systematically worse for specific parts of the population: people with low-income, specific health conditions or those who are part of a minority.
Short-term support doesn’t go far enough. Structural changes in the energy supply are needed to truly improve the condition of vulnerable households. A whole new business scheme needs to be invented.
During this session, city experts shared how they currently design and test business models with a social purpose. We looked into entrepreneurial opportunities and challenges of several cities eager to innovate their energy services. European experiences around energy solidarity and a more democratic energy market were presented to inspire and hopefully to bring social innovation into the EU Commission’s current electricity market design reform.
The event starting at 09:00 was followed by a little networking lunch from 12:00-13:00!
This workshop was co-organised with the like-minded projects Sun4All and CEES.
