Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DECIDE (Developing Energy Communities through Informative anD collEctive actions)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-12-01 bis 2023-07-31
EU energy transition places consumer at the center of the energy sector. However, it is clear that energy communication targeted to the individuals leads to change slowly. Therefore, a more effective way to transition is to lean on already existing communities and their dynamics. Collective energy actions have been implemented in all EU member states but mainly for energy efficiency measures. With the Green Deal and new regulatory framework for energy communities, energy markets and services there are new community energy concepts emerging. DECIDE project addresses existing and emerging collective energy actions and energy communities that provide benefits to their community.
DECIDE stands for Developing Energy communities through informative and collective actions. DECIDE project aims to understand how energy communities and collective energy actions are formed, how they grow and replicate to help accelerate their roll out across Europe. The project has brought together social scientists, stakeholder engagement and communication specialist, policy experts, technology experts and existing and emerging communities and collective initiatives. To understand the ecosystem of the existing and emerging initiatives and to help replication through trainings, webinars and workshops, DECIDE has been working with three types of initiatives. The involved initiatives include: those that are already involved in the project as pilots, those that get involved in the project as DECIDERs and those initiatives that follow DECIDE activities, but are not actively involved with project partners. For the first 18 months of the project, DECIDE has managed to expand the network of actively involved initiatives from original 7 DECIDE pilots active in 7 EU members states, to 18 initiatives, including pilots and DECIDERs which are active in 12 EU member states.
DECIDE stands for Developing Energy communities through informative and collective actions. DECIDE project aims to understand how energy communities and collective energy actions are formed, how they grow and replicate to help accelerate their roll out across Europe. The project has brought together social scientists, stakeholder engagement and communication specialist, policy experts, technology experts and existing and emerging communities and collective initiatives. To understand the ecosystem of the existing and emerging initiatives and to help replication through trainings, webinars and workshops, DECIDE has been working with three types of initiatives. The involved initiatives include: those that are already involved in the project as pilots, those that get involved in the project as DECIDERs and those initiatives that follow DECIDE activities, but are not actively involved with project partners. For the first 18 months of the project, DECIDE has managed to expand the network of actively involved initiatives from original 7 DECIDE pilots active in 7 EU members states, to 18 initiatives, including pilots and DECIDERs which are active in 12 EU member states.
In order to achieve its objectives, DECIDE has increased the number of initiatives involved with DECIDE from original 7 DECIDE pilots to 18 energy communities and collective actions in 12 member states. The original 7 DECIDE projects grew from involving 735 end-consumers to 2210 end-consumers. The involvement of additional 11 DECIDERs extended DECIDE activities and interaction to additional at least 4278 end consumers. Many of these initiatives are involved with more end consumers but they are not directly active in the initiatives or are not part of the initiative part which is active within DECIDE. To help activate the end consumers, DECIDE has organized 3 sets of the Focus meetings between each pilot and the project partners, 3 Coffee shop meetings where pilots and DECIDERs interact and 6 workshops and webinars that serve as training material on the Knowledge Hub. DECIDE launched two online publicly accessible Hubs, Knowledge Hub and Energy communities Hub where interested initiatives can find guidelines, reports, multimedia regarding different aspects of the energy communities and collective actions and constantly updated information on transposition of EU directives related to energy communities and collective self-consumption per member state with links to existing initiatives, respectfully.
To understand what drives different types of consumers to join different types of collective actions or energy communities, DECIDE partners have analysed existing knowledge and provided set of tools initiatives can use to engage users, provided in DECIDE reports (D1.1 D1.2 and D1.3) publicly available. Some of these strategies has already been used in collaboration with DECIDE pilots (smart heating survey for THERM and DOMX, postcard initiative for OUR, Energy Vision game in HIND, etc.). Moreover, DECIDE partners developed two different games as tools for user engagement and behaviour change. One is the Energy Vision game available from DECIDE website which can be used by the community or individuals to indicate which aspects they find important in potential energy community or collective action. This helps assess preferences of different types of users and the data collection has begun. The other is the Power of Community game, aimed at children 5-15, created as a board game to initiate discussion on clean energy and energy communities and foster intergenerational learning. The game has been played in Belgium and is distributed to partners in DECIDE countries to be played by the local schools and the connected families. Finally, DECIDE started the Energy revolution podcast where we put the spotlight on the minority communities to understand which aspects of energy or energy communities they find important or motivational. The podcast has started with communities in Belgium and aims to continue with other communities across EU.
DECIDE involved initiatives have variety of energy activities from control of electric or gas driven boilers for providing energy savings and flexibility services, over collective renovation and installation of rooftop PV for (social) housing associations, e-mobility for energy services to the community, collective investment in RES generation, biomass for heating, energy advice to PV for collective self-consumption including the concept of virtual power plant. The variety of energy services in collective actions and potential energy communities offers the broad scope for DECIDE to find replicable options, but also to analyse different aspects of regulation, business models and contractual agreements needed for these initiatives to be sustainable in the long term and replicable. Currently DECIDE pilots produce 10328 MWh of clean energy per year, saving 4453 t CO2-equivalent.
To understand what drives different types of consumers to join different types of collective actions or energy communities, DECIDE partners have analysed existing knowledge and provided set of tools initiatives can use to engage users, provided in DECIDE reports (D1.1 D1.2 and D1.3) publicly available. Some of these strategies has already been used in collaboration with DECIDE pilots (smart heating survey for THERM and DOMX, postcard initiative for OUR, Energy Vision game in HIND, etc.). Moreover, DECIDE partners developed two different games as tools for user engagement and behaviour change. One is the Energy Vision game available from DECIDE website which can be used by the community or individuals to indicate which aspects they find important in potential energy community or collective action. This helps assess preferences of different types of users and the data collection has begun. The other is the Power of Community game, aimed at children 5-15, created as a board game to initiate discussion on clean energy and energy communities and foster intergenerational learning. The game has been played in Belgium and is distributed to partners in DECIDE countries to be played by the local schools and the connected families. Finally, DECIDE started the Energy revolution podcast where we put the spotlight on the minority communities to understand which aspects of energy or energy communities they find important or motivational. The podcast has started with communities in Belgium and aims to continue with other communities across EU.
DECIDE involved initiatives have variety of energy activities from control of electric or gas driven boilers for providing energy savings and flexibility services, over collective renovation and installation of rooftop PV for (social) housing associations, e-mobility for energy services to the community, collective investment in RES generation, biomass for heating, energy advice to PV for collective self-consumption including the concept of virtual power plant. The variety of energy services in collective actions and potential energy communities offers the broad scope for DECIDE to find replicable options, but also to analyse different aspects of regulation, business models and contractual agreements needed for these initiatives to be sustainable in the long term and replicable. Currently DECIDE pilots produce 10328 MWh of clean energy per year, saving 4453 t CO2-equivalent.
DECIDE project is one of the rare projects that has a scope that includes both energy communities and collective energy actions. This provides DECIDE partners the possibility to assess existing and emerging community energy initiatives from various perspectives (user engagement, regulation, business models, contractual agreements etc.) and understand which enabling frameworks provide the optimal grounds for wider scale roll-out of energy communities and collective actions. The project has a strong focus on replication and understanding what motivated people to join and stay in a community energy initiative, as well as what are the possible benefits communities have from existing initiatives.
In the second half of the project, DECIDE will strongly focus on identifying the recipe needed for community energy initiatives to grow in different parts of EU. Already with 18 initiatives involved in DECIDE we have a basis from 12 member states. We plan to introduce additional initiatives to the project and hopefully expand the EU coverage to be able to better assess how the recipe for optimal energy communities changes based on regulation but also local socio-economic situation. In collaboration with the DECIDE initiatives social scientists will focus on understanding rebound effect and how to minimize it.
By the end of the project we plan to have a roadmap on how to start, grow, replicate and make energy communities and collective actions sustainable and useful for local communities. With examples from DECIDE active initiatives and followers we wont have a problem to provide examples of best practices.
In the second half of the project, DECIDE will strongly focus on identifying the recipe needed for community energy initiatives to grow in different parts of EU. Already with 18 initiatives involved in DECIDE we have a basis from 12 member states. We plan to introduce additional initiatives to the project and hopefully expand the EU coverage to be able to better assess how the recipe for optimal energy communities changes based on regulation but also local socio-economic situation. In collaboration with the DECIDE initiatives social scientists will focus on understanding rebound effect and how to minimize it.
By the end of the project we plan to have a roadmap on how to start, grow, replicate and make energy communities and collective actions sustainable and useful for local communities. With examples from DECIDE active initiatives and followers we wont have a problem to provide examples of best practices.