Fossil-free cities
Community energyAbout
Solar and wind often come first when people think about energy communities. But they can be so much more! We see more and more citizen-led projects exploring the heating and cooling sector.
Now, a LIFE project is dedicated to exactly that topic: ConnectHeat pioneers the exploration of the community energy concept to heating and cooling. There is a substantial potential to accelerate the green transition by leveraging heating communities. They are an effective way to deploy heat networks and integrate locally available renewables. However, this potential remains significantly untapped due to regulatory limitations that hinder the development of heating communities.
The concept of energy communities in heating and cooling remains largely unexplored and unfamiliar. A lack of supportive and coherent policies at both EU and national levels poses significant challenges to implementation. Consequently, there are limited replicable successful use cases across Europe and beyond.
Let us already share a few lessons learnt in the field of community heating and cooling:
- Identify and engage key stakeholders from the very beginning.
- Analyse local conditions and verify concept feasibility before moving forward.
- Develop clear planning with key steps and milestones from start to finish.
- Build capacity of key stakeholders from your area.
- Connect with and learn from those who succeeded in similar projects.
- Expect the unexpected.
Through the engagement of the three key pilot regions in Italy, Poland and Spain, the project is developing the resources for local and regional governments to encourage the uptake and long-term success of energy communities. These resources consist of a set of tools and training materials, tailored to the local context of each country, which are
(1) a Digital Hub;
(2) a Decision and Support System;
(3) an Energy Communities Governance Toolkit, and
(4) an E-learning platform.
