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.
