CITYnvest strives to introduce innovative financing models (revolving funds, EPC,TPF, cooperative models, etc.) in 3 Pilot Regions (partners Liège (BE), Rhodope (BG) and Murcia (ES)) and conduct a wide-scale capacity building programme in 10 focus countries concerning specific financial instruments/business models. The assessment of innovative financial models is integral to discovering opportunities and identifying and overcoming barriers that specifically local and regional levels face. The project aims to develop a web-based portal that provides diverse practical guidance and match-makes experienced forerunners with less-experienced first-timer authorities. CITYnvest will spread the under-utilized financing models that enable project bundling and aggregation by mobilising the entire value chain at the regional/local level towards Horizon 2020’s energy efficiency goals. To succeed, the project will first tackle public authorities’ lack of understanding and knowledge on innovative financing models for sustainable energy services, especially retrofitting the building stock. Second, CITYnvest’s concrete guidance will ensure in-depth capacity building and training. Third, close collaboration with authorities will trigger innovative financing schemes implementation and mobilise finance for energy efficiency services. Organization of consistent follow-up will monitor progress towards the objective of 37,5 GWh savings/year and other commitments. Finally, the national structures (of CEMR and CA) and invited experts will liaise with the participating public authorities in the capacity building programs to achieve CITYnvest’s goal of ensuring long-term engagement. CITYnvest partners liaise with an Advisory Expert Group and pool of experts to provide the expertise and guidance/training. CITYnvest will further create synergies with other wide-spread initiatives, such as the Covenant of Mayors, linking SEAPS to innovative financing models for energy efficiency.

The aim of the project is to create a framework under which critical stakeholders will cooperate to evaluate and promote currently available fossil-energy-free strategies and technologies (FEFTS) in EU agriculture to diminish in the short term and eliminate in the long run fossil fuels use in any farming process from cradle to farm gate, while maintaining yield and quality of the end-product. Such a framework will contribute in closing the gap between the available FEFTS either commercial or from applicable research results with the everyday EU agricultural practices by promoting effective exchange of novel ideas and information between research, industry, extension and the farming community so that existing research and commercial solutions can be widely communicated, while capturing grassroots level needs and innovative ideas from the farming and related industry communities. Financing opportunities for de-fossilizing EU agriculture will be investigated and highlighted. The specific objectives are to: -cons

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.

RESCOOP MECISE is short for Renewable Energy Sources COOPeratives Mobilizing European Citizens to Invest in Sustainable Energy. As European citizens and local authorities often lack time, financial means and technical expertise to initiate the necessary energy renovations of their houses and public buildings, the potential for energy efficiency projects remains largely untapped. RESCOOP MECISE will develop an integrated and innovative approach that gives answer to this impeding challenge. By integrating both renewable energy and energy efficiency projects into one innovative investment scheme RESCOOP MECISE will elaborate a completely new financing format. The financing scheme will make European citizens, REScoops, local authorities, the European Investment Bank and other related investment funds partners into the transition towards a more sustainable society. Moreover RESCOOP MECISE will encourage citizens and local authorities to initiate deep energy renovation projects by providing them with personal assistance and technical expertise that now remains with the REScoops. The RESCOOP MECISE project will also provide a clear cut solution for the financing problem that REScoops face when they want to start up with their first project. By means of setting up a European fund for both renewable energy and energy efficiency projects or through the development of a financial facilitation service for REScoops the REScoop MECISE project will enhance the potential for more successful energy efficiency projects throughout Europe.

REScoop Plus built on the knowledge and network of the REScoop 20-20-20 project. An interesting additional observation made in the project was that members of supplying REScoops change their behaviour reducing final energy consumption and investing money to produce RESenergy. The aim of the REScoop PLUS is therefore to get a better understanding and foster this behavioural change. It will identify and measure the best practices, share their knowledge, improve their activities in in their citizen’s engagement and energy efficiency actions and disseminate them to other supplying REScoops in Europe. The objective of REScoop PLUS is to make REScoops in Europe go beyond their activities of producing and supplying energy and take up energy savings for their members as a new pillar in their organisation. The largest supplying energy REScoops in Europe have recently taken up this task in several experimental projects, with different rates of success for different measures and geographies. The aim is now to go beyond the experimental phase and create a toolkit with a range of best practice products like communication tools, ICT tools for better measurements or new business models that support energy savings of consumers/members by changing the behaviour of consumers that are ready for market uptake by REScoops to implement into their organisation in order to reduce the CO2 footprint of their members.