CEES - Community Energy for Energy Solidarity

Within this 3-year project ALIenergy is both a Best Practice (reporting on the achievements of the Affordable Warmth Team) and a Work Package Leader, working with partners from Portugal, France, Belgium, Croatia and UK.

The main aims are to identify and analyse successful community energy initiatives to help alleviate fuel poverty and create a toolkit of effective interventions for replication. The Energy Solidarity Toolkit will highlight ways to make use of existing systems and tools. Featuring both technical and non-technical approaches, the toolkit will encompass several aspects, including:

• ways to identify vulnerable households
• strategies to engage both households and the right networks of people and organisations
• implementing effective action
• establishing necessary support frameworks in terms of legal, regulatory, and financial and nonfinancial schemes
• finding ways to measure the impact of actions

Specifically, the project will: 1) measure impacts associated with the adoption of behavioural change and energy efficiency measures in households; 2) outline frameworks for the creation of financial and non-financial support schemes; and 3) empower community leaders and organisations (including those working in adjacent sectors, such as financial advice, healthcare or fire/police services) to identify, assess and help alleviate energy poverty.

Together, these activities will facilitate rapid establishment of responsive networks of energy communities. Over the project’s three years, it is expected to reach more than 17 000 energy-poor consumers, trigger nearly €2 M of sustainable energy investment (for energy efficiency and small-scale renewables) and reduce energy-related emissions by more than 7,5 GWh per year, extending beyond the project duration.

The CEES consortium creates a unique opportunity to work with – and learn from – EU citizens facing energy poverty across diverse countries and local contexts.