LIFE LOOP – Local Ownership Of Power

The recent EU election results may want you to defend democratic energy (and other) initiatives even more? Inspiration and hope come from cities like Zagreb, Bistrita and from places like Crete in Greece. The local authorities and citizen organisations there are set to achieve their sustainable energy plans and strategies by catalysing new community energy initiatives. Being part of the LIFE LOOP project, they all focused on the first big milestone: Drafting a Community Energy Roadmap.

CommonEN in the North-West of Greece creates local, renewable energy projects, co-designed and co-owned by local people and together with the municipality of Ioannina. And energy sharing through virtual net metering was “just” the start.

The recent “Match made in heaven” workshop provided an excellent opportunity toward fostering better understanding and cooperation between municipalities and community energy projects. It underscored the importance of training, clear communication, and the need for resilient structures that can withstand the vicissitudes of political change.

The concept of energy communities in heating and cooling remains largely unexplored and unfamiliar. ConnectHeat pioneers the exploration of the community energy concept to heating and cooling.

The COMANAGE project was born to support local administrations and regional governments to guide and stimulate the creation and sustainability of their future local energy communities.

Meet LIFE LOOP in Brussels: On 12 June from 9:30-11:00 Sara Gollesi from Enostra and Marco Sideri, Mayor of the municipality of Usaramanna will be talking about their city-citizen collaborations around energy community projects.

Navigating the complex landscape of energy communities can be challenging for municipalities. To empower your local administration and enhance its community energy initiatives, we’ve brewed up something special – the self-assessment tracker. This tool serves as a compass, guiding your municipality towards a more robust and comprehensive engagement with community energy. 

Civil servants, prepare yourselves and your local authority to become community energy supporters! Develop your skills around 6 shots prepared by your favorite baristas.

The search for the one and only, the life-long partner, can be long and difficult. But why not having several ones and meeting them online? Don’t get us wrong: we’re talking about city-citizen partnerships. Now, there’s the LIFE LOOP matchmaking tool that can spark new connections and collaborations between municipalities and community groups.

Apply to this learning programme which also offers some community energy skills building. It is tailored to enhance local and regional actions in the field of energy efficiency of public and private buildings, public lighting, transport, and cross-sectoral actions such as local energy production.

Very often, still, energy community members have that same profile: they are white, well educated, male…And still, citizen and community energy is meant to be open to all! How can we get to a stronger diversity? What is missing to make it appealing to all groups of society, no matter their gender, race, religion, income, condition?

There are so many ways through which local governments can support and kick-off energy communities. From Bulgaria to Belgium, city leaders demonstrate what is possible. This article sums up some of the great options!

More than 80% of Croatians are yet to embrace renewable energy and a staggering 90% are unfamiliar with how to get permits for electricity self-production. Last November, the ZEZ team went on a mission to inform residents in Zagreb about the possibilities of citizen-led solar energy.

Since it launched its energy community LICHT Leuven, the Belgian city Leuven has become quite an expert on city-citizen collaboration. Read this interview with Jasmien Jossart and Eline Evers, Energy coaches and consultants at the City of Leuven and with Christina Vogt, who is in charge of Communication & community management at Ecopower.

December, time to take stock: Over the past year, the LIFE LOOP journey has been marked by several in-person and online workshops, where partners shared knowledge about the benefits and practicalities of community energy.

Gender equality is a value the LIFE LOOP team is strongly defending and that will flow into each and every new energy community we are about to establish in our pilot and satellite cities! Here’s a brief overview of REScoop.eu’s ‘gender power’ work.

A brand new manifesto envisions a decentralized and 100% renewable energy system that prioritizes the needs and participation of people.

Citizens in the Balkan region have started testing renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies and adapting the concept of community energy in their context, improving in this way their local environment and livelihoods. Some of them do so in partnership with their local governments, notably those who are also partner in the LIFE LOOP project.

Local authorities must play a leading role in driving a local, equitable transition. There is a great window of opportunity that local governments must seize. That is why the LIFE LOOP team, including cities and cooperatives, calls on local leaders to abide by the main pillars of this brand new Manifesto.

One of the ingredients we brought back from a study visit to the most innovative energy community actions in Austria and Vienna was this: stubborn optimism. One day is far too short to dive into the various citizen-focused energy projects that exist in the country. It was enough, though, to get a glimpse of how Austrians design their solar future in a collaborative way.

Sasha from Serbia, Sandy from Greece, Anna from Croatia…what do they have in common? They all decided that they wanted to make energy a collective and fun activity while contributing to something bigger.

Want to know why money isn’t flowing faster towards energy communities? In an interview, RESCoop’s development manager Stanislas D’Herbemont explains why investors and citizens still have quite something to learn.

We were invited to the Watt Matters podcast to talk about “neighbourhood watts”. Listen to Anna Francis, LIFE LOOP project manager from Energy Cities, to hear about the power and magic that lie behind energy communities.

How can we foster collaboration between citizen energy cooperatives and local municipalities, empowering communities to jointly develop impactful community energy projects? During the recent Community Energy Spring Gathering in Athens, REScoop.eu, with the support of Energy Cities organised a workshop to tackle that question by means of community energy roadmaps for local ownership of power.

The Catalonian NGO Enginyeria Sense Fronteres is carring out a research on energy communities and their potential to tackle energy poverty. Share your own experience on the topic!

A brandnew report has been released, identifying the existing diverse capital of energy communities and presenting the current barriers and opportunities for the collaborative development of energy communities with municipal involvement. It’s based on findings from a survey that targeted people involved in energy cooperatives or communities as well as local municipalities.

The ongoing crisis is highlighting the need to strengthen and live our democratic values if we are to create a healthy and resilient society in our region and beyond. Join the cooperative movement for a great event beginning of May in Athens.

We have prepared a survey to discover the barriers and opportunities that exist for the development of energy communities through the collaboration of citizen initiatives and local municipalities. What are the barriers and opportunities you face?