Energy poverty is getting more and more poignant around Europe. According to the latest pan-European report by the EU Energy Poverty Observatory, 37.4M people were unable to keep warm in 2018, 33.8M had arrears on their utility bills, and 19% of households reported being uncomfortably hot during summer. Despite this issue being mainly addressed from the public policy perspective through measures that range from alleviation using social tariffs to subsidies to household refurbishment or purchasing energy efficient appliances, civil society plays a very significant and growing role. Communities have found different ways of getting together to fight energy poverty. Solidarity is the cornerstone of all these initiatives which have huge potential for replication. Renewable energy cooperatives (RESCOOPs) are the most democratic and oldest form of energy community: groups of citizens that get together in a democratic manner to achieve energy resilience, independence and sustainable energy generation and use. The CEES project identifies and analyses the most successful cases of community energy initiatives to tackle energy poverty in Europe, validates them academically and empirically, supports the overcoming of regulatory and financial barriers, and then creates a toolkit for EU replication through RESCOOPs network of +3000 energy communities, a formula which has proven very successful in the past. CEES will facilitate the adoption of behavioural and energy efficiency measures in households, create financial and non-financial support schemes to address energy poverty and empower community leaders (and organizations working in adjacent areas such as financial advice, health care or even fire and police services) to identify and deal with energy poverty, establishing quick and responsive networks. We expect to reach more than 19 000 energy poor households and trigger 2M€ of sustainable energy investment with savings of over 7,5 GWh/year.

With the technological development and the increasing integration of RES, storage of various energy vectors supported by new organisational measures and business models is used to foster the development of local energy systems and to boost the use of local energy sources. COMPILE project aims to activate and use Local Energy Systems in order to support the fast growth of energy production from RES in constrained networks, and foster the transition from centralized system with passive users into a flexible network of active users featuring energy communities. This transformation aims to enhance RES integration and increase the security of supply, without traditional network reinforcement. COMPILE is uniting the efforts of DSOs, market actors and the communities of active consumers, since increasing decentralization needs more consumer engagement and participation. The project aims to better understand the way emerging decentralized solutions and the existing centralized infrastructure operate together in an economically efficient way. In COMPILE, we focus on showing the benefit of cooperation through energy communities that will solve current grid problems in a coordinated way, avoiding the costly network reinforcement while leading to an increased RES share. The demo cases in COMPILE are positioned along the spectrum of this passive-/active consumer transition and will show different approaches to coordination of consumers, technology and business models. The demos will have different “starting point”: different countries, different technology, organizational levels, community sizes, composition (industry/houses/retail), and regulatory perspective. All COMPILE demos feature a high replicability potential. Our vision is an interplay of flexible energy community-supported networks with current centralized system, increasing societal benefit with optimized planning. This leads to a more economical use of resources, help local businesses and decarbonise local areas.

REScoop Plus built on the knowledge and network of the REScoop 20-20-20 project. An interesting additional observation made in the project was that members of supplying REScoops change their behaviour reducing final energy consumption and investing money to produce RESenergy. The aim of the REScoop PLUS is therefore to get a better understanding and foster this behavioural change. It will identify and measure the best practices, share their knowledge, improve their activities in in their citizen’s engagement and energy efficiency actions and disseminate them to other supplying REScoops in Europe. The objective of REScoop PLUS is to make REScoops in Europe go beyond their activities of producing and supplying energy and take up energy savings for their members as a new pillar in their organisation. The largest supplying energy REScoops in Europe have recently taken up this task in several experimental projects, with different rates of success for different measures and geographies. The aim is now to go beyond the experimental phase and create a toolkit with a range of best practice products like communication tools, ICT tools for better measurements or new business models that support energy savings of consumers/members by changing the behaviour of consumers that are ready for market uptake by REScoops to implement into their organisation in order to reduce the CO2 footprint of their members.

Due to the growing demand of energy in the South-Mediterranean region, a shift towards renewable energies and notably solar energy is being promoted by the governments and the energy industry. One of the main obstacles for this development is the lack of qualified staff. The Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the region have launched training programmes in the field, but two main aspects still need to be addressed: improving a multidisciplinarity approach and links to businesses and applied research. Resources and international collaboration are needed in order to improve the quality of the training programmes and to ensure that they are linked to the latest research findings and requirements of the industry.In the larger context of modernisation, accessibility and internationalization of HEI systems in the Partner Countries, the MEDSOL project aims at enhancing the capacity of HEIs in Morocco and Egypt to deliver master-level programmes in solar energy. More specifically, it seeks to improve the quality of the currently existing training programmes, teaching methods and laboratory equipment for practice-based research. The work is conducted through close cooperation, sharing know-how and good practices between Programme and Partner Country HEIs as well as partners from business and applied research sectors. The proposed key activities are: 1. Improving existing curricula at the partnering HEIs in Morocco and Egypt; 2. Capacity building of HEI staff in Morocco and Egypt via a mobility scheme; 3. Updating training facilities at HEIs in Morocco and Egypt; 4. Providing opportunities for mobility for students in form of study/traineeship periods at the partnering institutions in the EU, Morocco and Egypt; 5. Disseminating project results and best practices in form of workshops and publications; 6. Promoting continued long-term collaboration, e.g. developing Double Master Degrees between the partners.

The main objective of POWERPOOR is to develop support programmes/schemes for energy poor citizens and encourage the use of alternative financing schemes (e.g. establishing energy communities / cooperatives, crowd funding). POWERPOOR will facilitate experience and knowledge sharing, as well as the implementation of small-scale energy efficiency interventions and the installation of renewable energy sources, increasing the active participation of citizens. Pilot energy poor support programmes/schemes will be designed, developed and implemented in eight countries across Europe, led by a network of certified Energy Supporters and Energy Communities Mentors. The Energy Supporters / Mentors will support (more than 22,000) energy poor households to plan and implement energy efficiency interventions, as well as participate in joint energy initiatives. Energy poor citizens will be engaged through various planned activities, such as Info Days, Local Energy Poverty Offices, and ICT-driven tools (Energy Poverty Mitigation Toolkit). The establishment of the Stakeholders Liaison Groups will also facilitate the engagement and the provision of support to energy poor households. Guidelines on how to tackle energy poverty in Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans will also be developed. Based on the experience gained and the lessons learnt from implementing POWERPOOR, EU policy recommendations and 8 National Roadmaps will be elaborated, so that policy makers at all governance levels can learn from the project. The project results will be broadly disseminated, and synergies will be pursued with global and EU initiatives, such as the EU Energy Poverty Observatory and the (EU and Global) Covenant of Mayors on Energy and Climate. The participation of networks in the Consortium will strengthen the dissemination and exploitation of POWERPOOR outputs across Europe during and beyond the project implementation.