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.

Solar power generates nearly 4% (and still growing) of Europe’s electricity demand. In 2021, the 200 GW of capacity installed in Europe will result in saving of 219 million CO2 tons/year. By 2030, 8 mill tons of PV panels are expected. Resource efficiency is a critical success factor for the solar power sustainable growth. Performance-based, third-party ownership Product-Service System (PSS) has been widely seen as a key circular economic model to stimulate resource efficiency and reduce waste generation. CIRCUSOL aims to establish solar power as a spearhead sector to demonstrate a path driven by PSS business models towards a circular economy in Europe. Through a co-creative approach with end-users and the entire value chain, CIRCUSOL will develop two main blocks of a circular PSS model: circular product management with re-use/refurbish/remanufacture (“second-life”) paths in addition to recycling, and value-added new product-services for residential, commercial and utility end-users. Five large-scale, real-life demonstrators will be set up in these 3 market segments, in 3 European countries (FR, BE and CH) to validate market acceptance, business viability and resource efficiency benefits. CIRCUSOL will deliver tangible innovation for the solar power industry with market-validated PSS business models, 2nd-life PV/battery labelling/certification protocols and cost/application analysis, and an info-sharing ICT platform. The results will be exploited in FR, BE and CH and prepared for replication in Europe (Letters of Support of stakeholders attached). CIRCUSOL will also deliver verified circular business innovation methodologies for broader use by other industries, sustainability professionals and academia; plus evidence-based knowledge in circular economy implementation for policy makers. All together, CIRCUSOL will contribute to a more resource efficient Europe, while reducing GHG emissions and creating new business opportunities and jobs.

ASSET´s goal is twofold: first, to create a sustainable and scalable ecosystem including all energy transition and education stakeholders: a) Companies from the energy sector, b) Universities and training actors, c) Authorities and policy makers and d) Society so as to enable a) continuous bottom up creation of research, innovation and educational (RIE) services and b) capacity pooling. By “service” we mean any research, innovation and educational relevant service that can be developed by the educational actors and delivered to the energy sector businesses and society at large. ASSET will also involve actors that can contribute to fuel interdisciplinary research combining SSH disciplines and capable of reaching out to the society to create the new generation of energy-sensitive citizens that are part of the energy transition mission. And second, to deliver the framework and means for continuous collaborative definition of the knowledge-competencies-skills required for the energy transition and for continuous resource pooling to efficiently educate/train large numbers of people in diverse and interdisciplinary topics and carry out research and innovation activities. The implementation of the ASSET approach will take place in 3 phases: 1) Ecosystem set-up with relevant actors to identify the knowledge, skill and competencies gaps in the addressed fields in order to design appropriate RIE services to close the gap. 2) RIE service development: Educational actors, based on the specifications of KSC gaps and on the results of the ASSET SSH research, will define the services (educational and research programme) that meet the specified needs. 3) Evaluation: ASSET delivers the developed RIE services to the targeted actors across EU universities, across companies from the energy sector and across EU societies. The aim is to collect feedback so as a) to refine ASSET offerings and b) define concrete ASSET sustainability plans

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.