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LIFE is the EU’s funding programme dedicated to the environment and climate action.
This call aims to foster the collaboration between local/regional authorities and energy communities.
Energy communities can help citizens and local authorities invest in renewables and energy efficiency. Community-owned projects can allow citizens to finance sustainable energy investments that deliver local economic benefits, social cohesion, and/or address other priorities such as improving the energy efficiency of housing or reducing energy poverty. The role of energy communities in the EU energy systems is expected to grow in line with the REPowerEU plan[1]. As part of that, for instance, the EU Solar Strategy defined the target of setting up at least 1 renewables-based Energy Community in every municipality with more than 10,000 inhabitants by 2025.
Developing and realising projects can be complex for energy communities due to the regulatory and policy context (e.g. changing national support schemes for renewables, burdensome licensing, heavy administrative procedures, etc.). For relatively small and citizen-led actors like energy communities, there are some additional practical challenges such as lack of information, limited access to finance, difficulties in aggregating small interventions or difficulties in engaging citizens and establishing effective governance and decision-making structures. These hurdles prevent energy communities around Europe from developing their potential.
An increasing number of local and regional authorities wish to make sure that more citizens and local communities benefit from the energy transition and play an active role in it. Supporting energy communities can be a way to achieve that and local governments are uniquely well-placed to support their development by creating an enabling framework for communities and addressing their development hurdles. Strategies to do so vary depending on the specific context of each territory. For instance, some public authorities may choose to directly (help) set-up and/or invest in an energy community, while others, may decide to open One-Stop-Shops (OSS) to support community energy projects, or procure public services and products from energy communities.
This topic aims to foster the collaboration between local/regional authorities and energy communities.
Proposals should focus on one of the two actions below:
In order to deliver on the actions above, proposals are encouraged to consider including some of the elements below (among other possible actions):
Proposals submitted under this topic should aim at fostering communities fitting the definition of “renewable energy community” according to the revised Renewable Energy Directive ((EU) 2018/2001)[2] and/or the definition of “citizen energy community” according to the Directive on common rules for the internal electricity market ((EU) 2019/944)[3]. They should adequately take into account participation and governance differences between both concepts.
Project applicants may choose to focus on one or more activities related to sustainable energy (production, transmission, distribution, energy efficiency, demand-response, etc.).
Priority will be given to proposals that develop areas in which community energy is less developed (in their specific context) including building renovation, heating and cooling or renewable gas market.
Proposals should demonstrate the support of the stakeholders which are necessary to ensure the success of the action (in particular, local or regional authorities).
Pilots can be energy communities (A) or support services for communities (B). Proposals should justify the potential for synergies between the selected pilots.
Proposals submitted under this topic should present the concrete results which will be achieved by the planned activities. This demonstration should include a detailed analysis of the baseline, well-substantiated assumptions and establish clear causality links between the expected impacts and the workplan.
Applicants are asked to quantify the topic specific impacts (where relevant), the LIFE CET common indicators and any other project-specific performance indicators which they consider relevant for their action.
The impacts of the proposals should be demonstrated during the project and within 5 years after the project lifetime. It should be noted that the figures reported will be assessed considering the context in which they are generated and the relative difficulty of launching energy community projects there.
The indicators for this topic include:
Proposals should also quantify their impacts related to the following common indicators for the LIFE CET subprogramme:
Beyond the impacts above, proposals are expected to deliver (where relevant):
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
− be legal entities (public or private bodies)
− be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- the coordinator must be established in an eligible country.
For both actions, proposals must be submitted by at least 3 applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities) from 3 different eligible countries.
The total indicative budget is EUR 7 000 000.
For both actions, the Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 1.75 million would allow the specific objectives to be addressed appropriately.
Brussels time