Report release: Igniting Community Energy Action – a summary of the LIFE LOOP project

Over the past three years, 3 pilots and 7 satellite locations have been weaving a local net of community energy allies, connecting civil servants to citizens. Focusing on places in the Adriatic and Balkans, the project team has learnt a lot about trust building, communicating and training around community energy and finding creative ways to overcome legal and technical obstacles to enable Local Ownership Of Power.

This report is a condensed summary of all the efforts, adventures and pleasures the municipalities, cooperatives and knowledge partners had during the past three years. You’ll learn about achievements and about how pilots and satellite cities addressed some of the challenges we had identified at the very beginning. Each city had its own approach, but all of them managed to bring some change: a new political culture, better skilled people, renewable energy installations and/or energy efficiency projects. All this happened thanks to the partners’ capacity-building, roadmap design, the choice of the right tools and clever communication across different target groups.

We hope their stories and policy recommendations will be useful for national and local civil servants, energy community members, and more broadly, civil society actors who are seeking ways to develop more participative political cultures and make energy democracy blossom in their own area. It may also be helpful for future project leaders who want to use EU funding with a social purpose, to reach our climate goals, strengthen their communities, create impactful initiatives and boost resilient local power.

And don’t miss the 10 tips from municipalities at the very end of the brochure!