Why are local governments key to community energy?

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.

Municipalities can take many different actions to favour the growth of community energy projects in their area. We identified the following main possibilities of intervention:

• Creating favourable conditions (target setting, procurement or regulations)
• Providing direct support (from informing to facilitating, mapping or giving access to public sites, but also support in the financing of projects)
• Joint ownership/management of infrastructure (be part of a community, create a joint utility etc.)

TANDEMS brings together European regions from different starting blocks and works towards the same goal: a clean energy transition. Starting in areas which are culturally diverse allows to develop methods and strategies which are applicable in many European regions, making the results of the project sustainable. Additionally TANDEMS works on developing policy briefs for policy changes, which will encourage the formation of regulations that ease the creation of energy communities. The policy briefs will include, among others, collaboration models, strategies on integration of energy communities into the energy market and best practices from pilot projects.

This full article by LIFE TANDEMS, one of the sister project of LIFE LOOP, sums up some of the great options: https://lifetandems.eu/how-municipalities-can-make-a-difference-in-energy-communities/