Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CEES (Community Energy for Energy Solidarity)
Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-08-31
The current fossil fuel crisis in the EU, triggered largely by post-COVID supply disruptions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has drawn attention to the chronic problem of how high energy prices (in relation to available income) undermine daily life for millions of EU citizens. It is well-documented that ‘energy poverty’ contributes to poor physical and mental health, negatively affects the ability of individuals and households to participate in social and economic activities and carries high costs for individuals and for governments.
Critically, as CEES Partners were piloting their selected energy solidarity mechanisms, rates of energy poverty across the EU had risen by 2-3%. Among particularly vulnerable groups that some CEES Partners serve, such as single mothers, the elderly and people in poorly insulated dwellings, the increase was even greater.
The need to accelerate the just, clean energy transition is clear. CEES believes that ‘energy solidarity’ is a key principle of such a transition, with energy communities (ECs) having an important role. Across four countries (Croatia, France, Portugal and the UK), CEES partners tested and evaluated community energy mechanisms to alleviate energy poverty through a variety of solidarity measures, and the project delivered an Energy Solidarity Toolkit to support upscaling of methods and measures that have been shown to be effective.
Critically, as CEES Partners were piloting their selected energy solidarity mechanisms, rates of energy poverty across the EU had risen by 2-3%. Among particularly vulnerable groups that some CEES Partners serve, such as single mothers, the elderly and people in poorly insulated dwellings, the increase was even greater.
The need to accelerate the just, clean energy transition is clear. CEES believes that ‘energy solidarity’ is a key principle of such a transition, with energy communities (ECs) having an important role. Across four countries (Croatia, France, Portugal and the UK), CEES partners tested and evaluated community energy mechanisms to alleviate energy poverty through a variety of solidarity measures, and the project delivered an Energy Solidarity Toolkit to support upscaling of methods and measures that have been shown to be effective.
Despite the challenging context, CEES Partners forged ahead with their pilot energy solidarity and financing mechanisms. Not surprisingly, the results were mixed. All Partners were able to report multiple successes and achieved targets set in the project proposal. But some faced substantial hurdles, requiring innovative approaches as different stages of the pilot process. The following short recaps fail to capture the complexity of each Partner’s situation, which can be more fully understood in the Evaluation report or through various publications on the CEES website.
ALIenergy (Scotland): Demand for services provided for 20+ years soared in the winter 2022/23. In fact, they had to ‘triage’ to deal with the most urgent situations first and manage a larger share of less urgent requests exclusively by telephone (rather than home visits). Efforts to attract donations were somewhat successful, but not enough to support launching any significant project or expanding services. ALIenergy’s long history of delivering effective services in a cost-efficient manner resulted in a substantial service contract to begin operating in a new area. In this way, ALIenergy met targets for increasing the number of households who would enjoy greater thermal comfort and/or have lower energy bills, while also securing more long-term funding that did not require extensive resources to apply for grants.
ENERCOOP (France): took steps to raise awareness of energy precarity and the cooperative’s commitment to help; identified which of its clients may be experiencing vulnerability; trained staff to engage with such households; and set up internal systems to work across departments to provide holistic support. The pilot helped convince senior executives to establish an Energy Solidarity Taskforce at the center of ENERCOOP operations.
Repowering London (UK): pilot activities ultimately resulted in significant learnings for the organisation across several fundraising activities, including learnings around direct crowdfunding for donations from individuals (which had not previously been tried) and building relationships to seek direct, unrestricted donations from local businesses or corporates. Inspiration and experiences from other CEES pilots helped to deepen these learnings. Repowering London was ultimately successful in securing a service contract for energy poverty services as a direct result of its CEES pilot activities and represents a new type of unrestricted funding for Repowering London’s energy poverty work. Repowering London also successfully launched a new Energy Support Tour of events in South London, through which it provided draughtproofing materials and energy advice.
ZEZ (Green Energy Cooperative, Croatia): As energy poverty is not yet recognized in national legislation or widely known among citizens, ZEZ faced multiple challenges in launching their ‘Ease Their Pain’ campaign. The campaign sought to provide energy home visits and deliver energy efficiency kits to 250 homes of elderly people in Zagreb. It started with a public awareness and crowdfunding campaign to raise the money needed. Strategic partnerships proved critical to success. Teaming with a well-trusted foundation boosted the credibility of ZEZ. Despite an extensive publicity campaign, ZEZ found low uptake of the offer of home visits. An invitation to present on a morning TV show changed everything: within days, the remaining timeslots were filled. ZEZ trained volunteers to carry out home visits.
Capacity building: Over four ‘Open Days’ and extensive direct interactions, CEES used the experience and knowledge gained through pilots to support eight additional ECs in their efforts to integrate energy solidarity mechanisms into their operations.
ALIenergy (Scotland): Demand for services provided for 20+ years soared in the winter 2022/23. In fact, they had to ‘triage’ to deal with the most urgent situations first and manage a larger share of less urgent requests exclusively by telephone (rather than home visits). Efforts to attract donations were somewhat successful, but not enough to support launching any significant project or expanding services. ALIenergy’s long history of delivering effective services in a cost-efficient manner resulted in a substantial service contract to begin operating in a new area. In this way, ALIenergy met targets for increasing the number of households who would enjoy greater thermal comfort and/or have lower energy bills, while also securing more long-term funding that did not require extensive resources to apply for grants.
ENERCOOP (France): took steps to raise awareness of energy precarity and the cooperative’s commitment to help; identified which of its clients may be experiencing vulnerability; trained staff to engage with such households; and set up internal systems to work across departments to provide holistic support. The pilot helped convince senior executives to establish an Energy Solidarity Taskforce at the center of ENERCOOP operations.
Repowering London (UK): pilot activities ultimately resulted in significant learnings for the organisation across several fundraising activities, including learnings around direct crowdfunding for donations from individuals (which had not previously been tried) and building relationships to seek direct, unrestricted donations from local businesses or corporates. Inspiration and experiences from other CEES pilots helped to deepen these learnings. Repowering London was ultimately successful in securing a service contract for energy poverty services as a direct result of its CEES pilot activities and represents a new type of unrestricted funding for Repowering London’s energy poverty work. Repowering London also successfully launched a new Energy Support Tour of events in South London, through which it provided draughtproofing materials and energy advice.
ZEZ (Green Energy Cooperative, Croatia): As energy poverty is not yet recognized in national legislation or widely known among citizens, ZEZ faced multiple challenges in launching their ‘Ease Their Pain’ campaign. The campaign sought to provide energy home visits and deliver energy efficiency kits to 250 homes of elderly people in Zagreb. It started with a public awareness and crowdfunding campaign to raise the money needed. Strategic partnerships proved critical to success. Teaming with a well-trusted foundation boosted the credibility of ZEZ. Despite an extensive publicity campaign, ZEZ found low uptake of the offer of home visits. An invitation to present on a morning TV show changed everything: within days, the remaining timeslots were filled. ZEZ trained volunteers to carry out home visits.
Capacity building: Over four ‘Open Days’ and extensive direct interactions, CEES used the experience and knowledge gained through pilots to support eight additional ECs in their efforts to integrate energy solidarity mechanisms into their operations.
In the second half of the project, Communication activities ramped up substantially, with: hosting of two additional workshops (webinars) to present pilots and activities; two newsletters distributed; multiple blogs (~35) added to the ‘News & More’ section of the website; and CEES organization and/or participation in 32 events (representing ~4000 people).
Publication of the CEES Energy Solidarity Toolkit was accompanied by an extensive social media campaign. Ultimately, the Toolkit area of the website has attracted several thousand unique visitors from almost 130 countries. The Toolkit has been downloaded over 500 times, and multiple entities have indicated their intent to apply it in future activities, thereby amplifying its reach.
Evaluation: Applying the evaluation framework developed in the first half of the project, the University of Birmingham carried out (and published on the website) an extensive evaluation report of each pilot. CEES Partners found the evaluation helpful for identifying what worked well and what could be improved – both critical to future planning.
Influencing EU legal and regulatory frameworks: REScoop.eu was directly involved in advocacy work as key EU directives were being revised. Notably, the EU Communication on Energy Poverty quoted content from the CEES Project.
Financing and funding: All partners report success in relation to their aims of both increasing funding and diversifying their funding sources. Their experience in piloting funding mechanisms is a critical element of the Energy Solidarity Toolkit, particularly as it clearly indicates the heavy human resources required and factors that render some approaches unfeasible. Helping other ECs identify the best-suited approaches for certain types of activities will boost efficiency in securing more funds. An overarching message of CEES is the need for governments and other funders to recognize that the substantial human resources needed to identify and engage with vulnerable households is a heavy burden for ECs that aim to have low profit margins. Grants and funding should reflect the need to carry out substantial ‘social’ activity before it is possible to implement ‘technical solutions.
Publication of the CEES Energy Solidarity Toolkit was accompanied by an extensive social media campaign. Ultimately, the Toolkit area of the website has attracted several thousand unique visitors from almost 130 countries. The Toolkit has been downloaded over 500 times, and multiple entities have indicated their intent to apply it in future activities, thereby amplifying its reach.
Evaluation: Applying the evaluation framework developed in the first half of the project, the University of Birmingham carried out (and published on the website) an extensive evaluation report of each pilot. CEES Partners found the evaluation helpful for identifying what worked well and what could be improved – both critical to future planning.
Influencing EU legal and regulatory frameworks: REScoop.eu was directly involved in advocacy work as key EU directives were being revised. Notably, the EU Communication on Energy Poverty quoted content from the CEES Project.
Financing and funding: All partners report success in relation to their aims of both increasing funding and diversifying their funding sources. Their experience in piloting funding mechanisms is a critical element of the Energy Solidarity Toolkit, particularly as it clearly indicates the heavy human resources required and factors that render some approaches unfeasible. Helping other ECs identify the best-suited approaches for certain types of activities will boost efficiency in securing more funds. An overarching message of CEES is the need for governments and other funders to recognize that the substantial human resources needed to identify and engage with vulnerable households is a heavy burden for ECs that aim to have low profit margins. Grants and funding should reflect the need to carry out substantial ‘social’ activity before it is possible to implement ‘technical solutions.