Assessing your municipality’s community energy support

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. 

Community energy compass

Just as a compass points true north, our LIFE LOOP self-assessment tracker can be a guide for municipalities seeking to enhance their community energy support. This tool empowers you to gain insights into your current practices, highlighting the way forward for a more community energy-supportive future.

How it works

• Access the online platform and navigate through targeted questions aligned with different community energy aspects.
• The questions will address different topics such as municipal planning and long-term strategy, communications and networking, skills and education, public procurement, start-up funding, and direct participation.
• Assess your municipality’s performance and receive immediate feedback on strengths and areas for improvement.
• After having increased skills and implemented community energy support mechanisms, you can retake the test to see how much your score has improved.

Practicalities

A civil servant from your city administration fills out the questionnaire on the self-assessment tracker with 17 questions related to different ways of municipal support for energy communities, leading to a final assessment report. This should not take more than 15 minutes. Once the questionnaire is completed, the municipality will see how it ranks in three support levels:

• “Not yet supportive”
• “Somewhat supportive”
• “Fully supportive” to community energy

Embedded in the community energy accreditation

Enhance your municipality’s capacity by pairing the self-assessment tracker with modules of the LIFE LOOP accreditation scheme. Join the espresso training to gain new insights and build practical knowledge, fortifying your municipality’s commitment to community energy initiatives. Moreover, you are encouraged to use the matchmaking platform: identify municipal assets such as available roofs, land, or retrofit opportunities that could be used for potential community energy projects and make them visible to energy communities in your area.