Guidelines on community-led heating and cooling

Finding Peers

The first thing to do when starting a Community-led Heating and Cooling (CH&C) is to find peers in your neighbourhood: people who are interested in renewable energy, want cheaper bills, or are thinking of making their house sustainable. It is advised to find people with varied expertise in governance, finance, and renewable technology – but this is not a must. The most important thing is to find motivated people at the beginning.

According to the Belgian energy cooperative Beauvent, there are some things that can help you increase the trust that people have in your energy community. They recommend to have a trust-based relationship with the local government, and a good team of enthusiastic members. That being said, they also emphasised the importance of having someone with financial knowledge, since “we are talking about raising and investing citizen’s funds, so you need to know what you are talking about”. Always keep in mind that your energy community needs to be open, transparent, and rigurous with its members’ funding.

The two main approaches that we have observed are a (1) neighbourhood approach, or a (2) package approach. It is also advisable to make a connection with other energy communities in your region, country, and the EU, in order to exchange practices and see what worked and what didn’t.