The Community Energy for Energy Solidarity (CEES) project is aggregating solutions to ensure that the EU’s transition to clean energy is “fair” by addressing energy poverty.
Aiming to help> 17,000 energy-poor consumers, boost almost € 2 million in sustainable energy investments (for energy efficiency and small renewables) and reduce energy-related emissions by> 7.5 GWh / year, CEES will pilot and scale powerful energy solidarity mechanisms from the whole sector of energy communities and other citizen energy initiatives.
During the three-year project, funded by Horizon 2020, the CEES project will do the inventory and assess current approaches of the energy communities, ultimately creating tools that others can apply. It will:
- survey existing mechanisms and measures by which ECs support energy-poor households and develop ways to validate the most promising approaches;
- pilot selected approaches across a wider number of projects and programmes;
- assess the pilots using frameworks established during the survey;
- promote broader deployment of effective approaches through the Energy Solidarity Toolkit.
The inability to keep homes adequately warm or cold negatively affects 50-125 million EU citizens, undermining their health and well-being and resulting in public budget expenditures. The costs associated with the transition to clean energy – some of which will be passed on to consumers – threaten to further increase costs.
CEES’s seven partners – ALIENERGY, Coopérnico, Enercoop, Les 7 Vents, Repowering and ZEZ – were selected for their expertise and experience in developing innovative approaches to different aspects of energy communities.
The key objective of CEES is to encourage all energy communities and citizen energy initiatives in the EU, whether new or existing, to incorporate energy justice as a fundamental principle. To this end, CEES includes an open call for wider, informal participation.
Within CEES, the University of Birmingham takes the lead in assessing various actions to combat energy poverty. To increase the reach and visibility of the project, the Partnership also includes RESCOOP, which represents all EU energy projects, and The Energy Action Project (EnAct), which brings communication expertise. SNAP is the administrative leadership.
