Efforts to induce energy-friendly behavior from end users through behavioral interventions are characterized by lack of customer personalization (“one-size-fits-all interventions”), partial understanding about how different interventions interact with each other and contrasting evidence about their effectiveness, as a result of poor testing under real world conditions. The NUDGE project has been conceived to unleash the potential of behavioral interventions for long-lasting energy efficiency behavior changes, paving the way to the generalized use of such interventions as a worthy addition to the policy-making toolbox. We take a mixed approach to the consumer analysis and intervention design tasks combining surveys and field trials. Firmly rooted in behavioral science methods, we study individual psychological and contextual variables underlying consumers’ behavior to tailor the design of behavioral interventions for them, with a clear bias towards interventions of the nudging type. The designed interven

Energy poverty is getting more and more poignant around Europe. According to the latest pan-European report by the EU Energy Poverty Observatory, 37.4M people were unable to keep warm in 2018, 33.8M had arrears on their utility bills, and 19% of households reported being uncomfortably hot during summer. Despite this issue being mainly addressed from the public policy perspective through measures that range from alleviation using social tariffs to subsidies to household refurbishment or purchasing energy efficient appliances, civil society plays a very significant and growing role. Communities have found different ways of getting together to fight energy poverty. Solidarity is the cornerstone of all these initiatives which have huge potential for replication. Renewable energy cooperatives (RESCOOPs) are the most democratic and oldest form of energy community: groups of citizens that get together in a democratic manner to achieve energy resilience, independence and sustainable energy generation and use. The CEES project identifies and analyses the most successful cases of community energy initiatives to tackle energy poverty in Europe, validates them academically and empirically, supports the overcoming of regulatory and financial barriers, and then creates a toolkit for EU replication through RESCOOPs network of +3000 energy communities, a formula which has proven very successful in the past. CEES will facilitate the adoption of behavioural and energy efficiency measures in households, create financial and non-financial support schemes to address energy poverty and empower community leaders (and organizations working in adjacent areas such as financial advice, health care or even fire and police services) to identify and deal with energy poverty, establishing quick and responsive networks. We expect to reach more than 19 000 energy poor households and trigger 2M€ of sustainable energy investment with savings of over 7,5 GWh/year.

The aim of SCCALE 203050 (Sustainable Collective Citizen Action for a Local Europe) is to scale the growth of energy communities across Europe in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy production, district heating and more in households and non-residential buildings. Building on the experience of the cooperative movement and a wide range of cities and municipalities, we will: - Set up at least 25 energy communities, and directly support the replication of the SCCALE methodology in 34 additional communities - Develop a step-by-step guide for potential community leaders to support the creation, maturation and replication of energy communities. - Develop currently specific key performance indicators for community leaders and municipalities to assess the maturity and growth of the energy communities in their territories, and for external partners to assess a community's maturity and financial viability. - Gather proven technical tools and financing models suitable for citizen collective action. - Identify viable contractual models for energy communities and the involved stakeholders. - Encourage the proliferation of energy communities across Europe via a network of experts (including municipalities, SMEs, NGOs and academic institutions) to support new and existing energy communities. - Support policy makers at the European, national and local level in identifying suitable policies to foster the growth of energy communities in Europe through recommendations and discussions with policy makers.

The Biomasud certification system of the quality and sustainability of solid biofuels (http://biomasud.eu/), was created within the BIOMASUD interreg IV project in 2013 with the aim of covering all typical Mediterranean biomass resources used as solid biofuels in small and medium heating installations: domestic, commercial, institutional etc. The label is owned by several partners established in Spain, Portugal and France.Presently, the label includes wood chips and pellets, olive stones and some types of nut shells. Also within Biomasud project, a GIS tool that provides information about sustainable biomass resources and costs available in different Mediterranean countries was updated and upgraded with new information about agroindustrial residues and pellets production and producers Presently, some solid biofuel companies are already producing under the Biomasud quality label in Spain, and others have also shown the interest to adopt it in Spain and Italy, but there is a strong need for development of the label along the whole Mediterranean area where the biomasses and solid biofuels under the label are widely produced and used in the domestic sector market out of any standards. Moreover, there is also a need to extend the label to new biomasses that are used in the Mediterranean area and which are not covered by the label, this making therefore more difficult their appropriate combustion in stoves or small-medium size boilers. Finally, it is also important to mention that, in order to improve the label, a research is needed to develop new and/or review the existing Biomasud label analytical limits and sustainability tools along the value chain, including, the GHG calculation procedure. In the described context, the overall goal of the project is the improvement, dissemination and market development of the Biomasud label in order to promote the sustainable use of the Mediterranean autochthonous solid biofuels in the domestic sector.

With the technological development and the increasing integration of RES, storage of various energy vectors supported by new organisational measures and business models is used to foster the development of local energy systems and to boost the use of local energy sources. COMPILE project aims to activate and use Local Energy Systems in order to support the fast growth of energy production from RES in constrained networks, and foster the transition from centralized system with passive users into a flexible network of active users featuring energy communities. This transformation aims to enhance RES integration and increase the security of supply, without traditional network reinforcement. COMPILE is uniting the efforts of DSOs, market actors and the communities of active consumers, since increasing decentralization needs more consumer engagement and participation. The project aims to better understand the way emerging decentralized solutions and the existing centralized infrastructure operate together in an economically efficient way. In COMPILE, we focus on showing the benefit of cooperation through energy communities that will solve current grid problems in a coordinated way, avoiding the costly network reinforcement while leading to an increased RES share. The demo cases in COMPILE are positioned along the spectrum of this passive-/active consumer transition and will show different approaches to coordination of consumers, technology and business models. The demos will have different “starting point”: different countries, different technology, organizational levels, community sizes, composition (industry/houses/retail), and regulatory perspective. All COMPILE demos feature a high replicability potential. Our vision is an interplay of flexible energy community-supported networks with current centralized system, increasing societal benefit with optimized planning. This leads to a more economical use of resources, help local businesses and decarbonise local areas.