Community Energy Municipal Guide

Municipalities play a crucial role in the development of renewable energy projects. Most successful community energy projects in Europe are those where groups of citizens collaborate with local authorities. Local or regional governments have everything to gain from promoting the scale-up of community energy in their area and can initiate new initiatives. However, many cities are still struggling to move from ideas to action.

The Community Energy Municipal Guide wants to address this problem. It presents different ways municipalities can work with their residents to kickstart and support community energy projects. It builds on the most relevant publications on the topic and includes more than 40 examples from all over Europe to inspire further action. The examples are structured around the following topics:

• Favourable regulation for community energy
• Engagement and outreach
• Support in financing projects
• Sharing staff and resources
• Developing supporting platforms, tools and programmes
• Facilitating dialogues between local stakeholders
• Giving access to public sites
• Buying community power or heat
• Co-investing in a jointly owned local project
• Becoming a direct member of an energy community

This guide is very useful for local governments that want support community energy but don’t know where to start from. Energy communities can also use it to proactively approach their local authorities and present them a wide range of options and examples of successful collaborations between municipalities and citizens.