Project description
Communications and interactions for active energy communities
The concept of energy community aims to drive citizens’ participation in the energy system. As a result, it is essential to better understand the processes of establishment and management of energy communities. The EU-funded DECIDE project will identify which kind of communications and interactions are suitable for encouraging participation in energy communities and which kinds of individuals and groups they should address. It focuses on three groups of energy communities: those existing at the beginning of the project, those that will be introduced during the project’s process, and those not directly involved in the project but benefiting from it. The three groups will provide complementary and geographically well-spread pilots such as social housing and middle-class and upper-class quarters in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, France and the Netherlands.
Objective
The focus of the project is to gain a better understanding in how to set up and roll out energy communities and energy efficiency services. The project builds on the knowledge and work within the EU Bridge initiative, ETIP SNET and others. In order to deliver this project successfully, the consortium includes a complementary group of experts on social science, policy and regulation, implementation, energy aggregation and energy service developers.
The project focusses on 3 levels of Energy Communities: those existing at the start of the project and included in the work plan as such; those that will be initiated throughout the project and those not directly partnering in the project, but benefiting from the exchange and expertise of DECIDE. All together they provide a set of complementary and geographically well-spread cases: social housing, middle class and upper class neighbourhoods covering Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Estonia, Germany and France.
All together these pilots will deliver the necessary cases for a sound outreach built on an extensive social science basis. The project will work on identifying which kind of individuals and groups need what kind of communication and interaction to be motivated to join; i.e. work on identifying stakeholder segmentation to reach maximum input by targeted actions and prioritization in stakeholder segments. Different methods will be tested and evaluated with the different identified groups, including techniques as intergenerational learning. The outreach is active: instead of a toolbox with reports, presentations, templates, ... we want you to learn HOW to reach impact and do that through webinars, workshops, interactive sessions at diverse conferences, ...
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
3050 Oud-Heverlee
Belgium
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.