Guidelines on community-led heating and cooling

Finding Stakeholders

Energy communities are built around the concept of partnership and cooperation. They bring together people and organisations with differing expertise and interests into a common objective of non-for-profit social and environmental improvement. There are always founders that give the project the first impulse and bring together different members, such as social organisations, heating engineers and other citizens, or the municipality. At any rate, it is key that local citizens are the majority owners of the energy community through the one-person-one-vote principle, in order to ensure the democratic nature and stability of their projects. If this basic building block is not present, your project risks not having enough social acceptance, or even face backlash.

Below we explain the different actors that citizens can bring into the membership, and how they can make your energy community flourish. After all, including the municipality and SMEs in your energy commmunity will allow for a democratic impetus to your local transition. It will also allow you to overcome several challenges (e.g. administrative, legal, financial).