Crowdfunding for a low carbon energy system: addressing major challenges for EU-wide public and private investments in energy and carbon saving measures

Project Information

bettervest

Grant agreement ID: 650027

DOI

10.3030/650027

Project closed

EC signature date 19 September 2014

Start date 1 October 2014

End date 31 March 2015

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

bettervest GmbH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - bettervest (Crowdfunding for a low carbon energy system: addressing major challenges for EU-wide public and private investments in energy and carbon saving measures)

Reporting period: 2014-10-01 to 2015-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Energy efficiency is undisputed one of the most sustainable ways to protect the environment and strengthen the competitiveness of enterprises and whole economies. Nevertheless, a prerequisite is the willingness of market actors and politicians to foster energy efficiency. The underlying idea of this study is to build a marketplace for energy efficiency projects where the market actors (project owners and crowd investors) can get together. In 2012 the crowdfunding platform bettervest.de saw these conditions given in Germany. And bettervest was right. The study is oriented towards these conditions to repeat the successful launch of bettervest in other EU-countries. Therefore the objective of the study was to examine the market conditions in 28 EU countries, Switzerland, and Norway to select a country or countries for an expansion of the business model crowdfunding for energy efficiency.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The final study with the detailed market analysis comprises more than 190 pages including 30 tables and approximately 30 pages bibliographical references. The market analysis started with all 28 EU-countries, Switzerland, and Norway and over three steps reduced them to 12 interesting countries. Subsequently these 12 countries were analysed in detail with a focus on the energy efficiency market, the alternative finance market (incl. crowdfunding), the sustainable investment market, the political and social backing and the legal regulations.
The figure “Overall Results of the Market Analysis” briefly shows the investigated countries and the corresponding findings.
As an overall result, the UK and the Netherlands are the most promising countries for a rollout. In these countries, the core markets energy efficiency, alternative finance (incl. crowdfunding), and sustainable investments are well developed and the political and social backing is strong. Crowdfunding regulations are unproblematic in most countries as there are enough exceptions to develop a business model that appropriately meets the legal requirements. Furthermore Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden are countries with adequate market conditions.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The potential impact of the intended action and business can be estimated to be 57 GWh of electricity and 69,000 tons of CO2 that will be saved over the first three years of business. This would be a significant contribution to the EU-20-20-20 goals and the energy transition which can not be achieved without great efforts in the area of energy efficiency.

OverallResultsofMarketAnalysis