Municipality Community Energy Platform

The accreditations scheme developed by LIFE LOOP wants to encourage municipalities to drive a socially just and climate-friendly energy system with renewables and people at its core. During the energy crisis, energy communities have played a vital role in shielding consumers from volatile market prices. They embody democratic principles by prioritizing direct participation, inclusivity, collective decision-making and bringing out new non-profit-driven economic models based exclusively on consumer interest.

What better time than now for local authorities like ours to be more involved in community energy projects? All over Europe, many cities have already been testing multiple ways to initiate, support and facilitate such projects.

The community energy accreditation scheme developed by the LIFE LOOP project is the first ever scheme that acknowledges municipalities demonstrating foresightedness in energy community matters. It is free of charge for local authorities and has been designed to require as little time as possible for local authority representatives participating in it.

This scheme is for those municipalities who want to show their commitment to empower and speed up the creation of or partnership with energy communities in its area, no matter whether they are beginners or advanced.

Your municipality can get accredited by committing to:

 

Self-assessment test

Assess your state of the art with the self-assessment tracker: How much of a community energy supporter is your municipality and what is missing?

🔎 Practically this means: a civil servant of the city administration fills out the questionnaire on the self-assessment tracker packer with 17 questions related to different ways of municipal support for energy communities, leading to a final assessment report. This should not take more than 15 minutes. Once the questionnaire is completed the municipality will see how it ranks in 3 support levels:

🔴 “Not yet supportive”
🟠 “Somewhat supportive”
🟢 “Fully supportive” to community energy

Take the test

 

Training

Encourage in-house capacity-building, i.e. providing staff time to enable civil servant colleagues to benefit from the self-paced Community Energy Espresso course running between 1 April and 31 August 2024

🔎 Practically this means: as many civil servants as possible of an administration complete at least 2 of the 5 modules and attend the 2 “live online classes” lasting 1 hr 15 (on 9 April and in June). Modules and civil servants can be freely chosen by the municipal decision-makers according to relevance and local needs. Each module is designed in a way as to be completed by a civil servant in 2-3 hours.

Go to our suggested training

 

Match-making tool

List your municipal assets on the LIFE LOOP asset match-making tool and link with new or existing energy communities in your area. Those assets can then be allocated to local project developers following local legal requirements.

🔎 Practically this means: A designated civil servant identifies assets such as available roofs, land or retrofit opportunities that could be used for potential community energy projects. This will enable the municipality, as asset holders, to show their readiness for community energy and to find the perfect partner amongst local stakeholders. This should not take more than 5 minutes per asset.

Go to our match-making tool

 

Resources

We have gathered a collection of resources tailored to local authorities to help you move forward with supporting community energy in your area.

Go to our suggested resources