Innovative Support for citizen-led Local Energy Transition

Introduction

In small islands, Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) as defined in Directive (EU) 2018/2001 can accelerate the decarbonisation process, because they allow overcoming some technical and non-technical barriers typical of islands.

Project Overview

The ISLET project involves three pilot islands in Greece, Italy, and Croatia in designing a model applicable in small islands, to support local authorities to cooperate with citizen-led initiatives.

Project Objectives

The project will:

1. Enhance the municipalities’ capacity to create a favourable environment for RECs, thanks to new forms of collective ownership of energy projects.
2. Increase the cooperation between local/regional authorities and citizens that want to create RECs by improving public participation and engagement in citizen-led initiatives and supporting local policy frameworks.
3. Fine-tune a common path for building RECs in small islands and testing it in other islands.
4. Improve the information of RECs, related national and EU laws, and funding opportunities among local authorities’ representatives in small islands at the EU level.
5. Define an efficient business plan tailored on Mediterranean small islands to improve access to funds to finance RECs.
6. Empower local actors to collectively address energy transition targets through the use of public resources, funds, and capacity, enhancing technical and management local skills.
7. Evaluate the contribution of citizen-led initiatives in islands decarbonisation.
8. Create a European network of peer-to-peer support for island municipalities to provide support to their citizens for building RECs.

Consortium Expertise

Thanks to a consortium expert both in islands decarbonisation and in community-led energy initiatives, the project will implement three pilot renewable energy communities and aim at replicating this experience in many other Mediterranean islands, providing municipalities, citizens, companies, and local and regional stakeholders with the tools and support for energy communities implementation.