Community Energy for the uptake of renewables in the electricity sector. Connecting long-term visions with short-term actions (COME RES)

Project duration

01.09.2020. – 28.02.2023. (30 months)

Description

Renewable Energy communities. The current energy transition is not only making the shift from fossil to renewable energy sources, but it also rethinks how energy is produced and distributed. Next to traditional top-down distribution, with electricity being generated in large power plants and transported to the end consumer, local energy networks gain in importance. These local energy networks have a huge potential in our future energy system. Facilitating their rollout and supporting the implementation of the facilities for renewable energy communities (RECs) is the focus of the COME RES project.
Issues addressed and major steps. COME RES covers diverse socio-technological systems including community PV, wind (onshore), storage and integrated solutions, investigated in nine European countries. The project has a specific focus on a number of target regions in these countries, where community energy has the potential to be further developed and model regions where community energy is in a more advanced stage of development. COME RES analyses political, administrative, legal, socioeconomic, spatial and environmental characteristics, and the reasons for the slow deployment of RECs in selected target regions.
Country Stakeholder Desks. To engage closely with local stakeholders the project is setting up stakeholder desks in each country and organises solution-oriented thematic dialogues and policy roundtables to co-create solutions to overcome existing barriers for the growth of community energy. These can be regarded as informal dialogue fora involving the national COME RES project partners, community energy organisations, other key actors and market players from specific target regions and beyond.

Project objective

The project aims to facilitating the market uptake of renewable energy sources (RES) in the electricity sector. Specifically, the project focusses on advancing renewable energy communities (RECs) as per the EU’s recast Renewable Energy Directive. COME RES takes a multi- and transdisciplinary approach to support the development of RECs in nine European countries; Belgium, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

Main activities

Both overall and specific objectives will be reached by

1. analysing the potentials, barriers and drivers for RECs in the target regions,
2. carrying out stakeholder dialogues,
3. developing regional action plans and business-model proposals for target regions,
4. examining good/best practice cases that are transferable to specific local, regional and national contexts,
5. initiating transfers of best practice solutions via policy labs supported by capacity development and training and developing a renewable energy community platform.
6. organization of the International Policy Round Table,
7. communication activities,
8. national level seminars for municipalities,
9. thematic seminars.

Project budget

Planned project budget 2 998 847.50 EUR. LEIF contributes to the Project as Project partner with amount 94 475.00 EUR.

Project lead partner:

1.  Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) – Germany

Project partners, representing energy agencies, environmental agencies, applied research - consulting institutes, regional governments:

1.   Eindhovenas Tehniskā universitāte (TU/e) – Netherlands
2.   Ecoazioni (ECOAZIONI) – Italy
3.   ICLEI  Eiropas sekretariāts (ICLEI) – Germany
4.   Agenzia nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l'energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile (ENEA) – Italy
5.   Krajowa Agencja Poszanowania Energii S.A. (KAPE) – Poland
6.   ECORYS – Spain
7.   Asociación Canaria de Energías Renovables (ACER) – Spain
8.   Becker, Büttner & Held - Belgium
9.   Instituto de ciencia e inovacao em engenharia mecanica e engenharia industriual (INEGI) - Portugal
10.   Vlaamse instelling voor technologisch onderzoek n.v. (VITO) - Belgium
11.   Rescoop EU asbl (RESCOOP.EU ASBL), - Belgium
12.   Norges vassdrags og energidirektorat (NVE), - Norvegia
13.   Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) – Norvegia

Project partners from Latvia

1.  Latvian Environmental Investment fund (LEIF)
2.  Institute of Physical Energetics (IPE)

Additional information: Aija Zučika, project manager, phone.+371 67845111

Project is financed by:

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 953040

Project home page: https://come-res.eu/

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