Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Programme 2014 - 2020 INTERREG VB North Sea

Date of latest update: 2024-09-18

Description

Description (EN):

Today the role of citizens in the energy system is limited to be “energy-consumers”, at most “energy prosumers” or investors. This role will change in the future. The EC introduced a new vision in the winter package 2016. In MEMO/16/3961 the EC states: “All consumers across the EU will be entitled to generate electricity for either their own consumption, store it, share it, consume it or to sell it back to the market. These changes should make it easier for households and businesses to become more involved in the energy system, to better control their energy consumption and respond to price signals.” The updated European Renewables Energy Directive (ERED-14-06-2018) reinforces the importance. To succeed, another degree of organization is required to empower the groups of citizens and businesses in their new role. Currently, citizens and businesses encounter significant challenges (governance, technical, legal, financial) to play an active role in the energy market. Pilot projects through the NSR will be run that use opportunities to organize direct access to the energy market by engaging and connecting existing civil society structures, such as schools, sports clubs, neighbourhoods, business parks or local energy cooperatives. 14000 households in the directly involved municipalities and regions of the partners will be empowered, leading to an increased uptake of renewable energy by 1% of the households in the NSR and a reduction of 28000 carbon dioxide emissions in the NSR.

Achievements (EN):

EMPOWER2.0 is an INTERREG NSR project by a consortium consisting of 13 partners from the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and the UK. The consortium consists of local and regional authorities, knowledge institutions, local energy communities and experts. The aim of EMPOWER2.0 is to increase (transnational knowledge about) local citizen ownership of energy generation. The project aims to demonstrate and accelerate the empowerment of citizens to become active energy citizens - and to strengthen local energy communities through existing social structures - by developing new proposals and applying new, emerging and existing energy ownership solutions in seven diverse pilot set-ups. The project ran from the end of 2019 to the end of 2022. The pilots touch on various themes, e.g. in the Dutch city of Zaanstad, an energy community was set up by local cooperative Wespark, in addition - also in Zaanstad - a focus approach was rolled out to combat energy poverty. A few kilometres away, local initiatives in the city of Haarlem worked on scaling up their approach to increase the number of solar roofs owned by citizens in the region. In Essex, England meanwhile, the local county worked on collective purchasing propositions and building energy communities around solar PV projects on community buildings. In Denmark, the smallest citizen-owned sustainable heat grid was developed in the small village of Føns. The Belgian intercommunal Leiedal sharpened its approach to collective sustainability schemes for homeowners and in the town of Zwevegem, the Province of West Flanders is developing an educational demonstration project on a former power plant in order to take visitors on a journey to a new public function as a fully sustainable heritage site. Moreover, a project lifetime extension offered the pilots time to further develop their pilots in the final period.The pilots - despite the difficulty of bringing citizens together in times of the covid pandemic - managed to engage more than 6,000 households. The experiences and lessons learned also lead to interesting milestones at the transnational project level, which are worth sharing with a wider audience. For example, the consortium developed a whitebook, outlining the obstacles standing in the way of citizen ownership in the local energy transition and offering guidance to work around them. This effort also led to two sets of recommendations; one aimed at citizens to kickstart their journey and one set of recommendations to help local governments to offer citizens facilitate on their way towards becoming active energy citizens. Besides residents of the participating municipalities and regions, students were also involved in the project. A highlight was the online hackathon (2020) that attracted more than 70 international students to collaborated on hands-on solutions in local energy transition that inspired the pilot projects even further. Other highlights that are part of EMPOWER's legacy include EMPOWER-TV, the digital toolkit, prosumer personas and national roadmaps. The digital toolkit provides citizens and governments with interactive tools to engage in the energy transition, tailored to their needs. In addition, using recognised business methodologies, the consortium has worked on identifying common personas of potentially active energy citizens and, based on these, possible business cases and national roadmaps to fill in the gaps in current policies. Both the toolkit and the lessons learned from the roadmaps will be implemented in the educational public pathway of the Transfo Pilot, in this way the legacy of EMPOWER will be secured for a wide audience and far beyond the lifespan of the project.

Website: https://northsearegion.eu/empower-20

Thematic information

Renewable energy

Specific Objective: Stimulate the adoption of new products, services and processes to reduce the environmental footprint of regions around the North Sea

Thematic Objective: (06) preserving and protecting the environment and promoting resource efficiency by:

Investment Priority: (06g) supporting industrial transition towards a resource- efficient economy, promoting green growth, eco-innovation and environmental performance management in the public and private sectors

Partners (14)

Lead Partner: Gemeente Zaanstad

Address: Stadhuisplein 100, 1506 MZ Zaandam, Netherlands

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.zaanstad.nl

Total budget: EUR 486 376.00

ERDF budget: EUR 243 188.00

Essex County Council

Name: Essex County Council

Address: County Hall, Market Road, CM1 1QH Chelmsford, United Kingdom

Legal status: public

Website: https://www.essex.gov.uk

Total budget: EUR 780 880.00

ERDF budget: EUR 390 440.00

Gate2Growth

Name: Gate2Growth

Address: Scion-DTH, Diplomvej 381, DK 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

Legal status: private

Website: http://www.gate2growth.com

Graham Oakes Ltd

Name: Graham Oakes Ltd

Address: 64 The Crescent, CW9 8AD Northwich, United Kingdom

Legal status: private

Website: http://www.grahamoakes.co.uk

Total budget: EUR 62 250.00

ERDF budget: EUR 31 125.00

Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Name: Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Address: Wibautstraat 3B,, 1091 GH Amsterdam, Netherlands

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.hva.nl

Total budget: EUR 229 164.00

ERDF budget: EUR 114 582.00

Intercommunale Leiedal

Name: Intercommunale Leiedal

Address: President Kennedypark 10, 8500 Kortrijk,, Belgium

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.leiedal.be

Total budget: EUR 624 544.00

ERDF budget: EUR 312 272.00

Middelfart Kommune

Name: Middelfart Kommune

Address: Nytorv 9, 5500 Middelfart, Denmark

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.middelfart.dk

Total budget: EUR 517 144.00

ERDF budget: EUR 258 572.00

Province de Flandre occidentale

Name: Province de Flandre occidentale

Address: Koning Leopold III-laan 41, 8200 Sint-Andries, Belgium

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.west-vlaanderen.be

Total budget: EUR 540 000.00

ERDF budget: EUR 270 000.00

Southend on Sea Borough Council

Name: Southend on Sea Borough Council

Address: Civic Centre, Victoria Avenue, SS2 6ER Southend-on-Sea, Essex, United Kingdom

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.southend.gov.uk

Total budget: EUR 247 648.00

ERDF budget: EUR 123 824.00

Universiteit Gent

Name: Universiteit Gent

Address: Wetenschapspark 1, 8400 Oostende, Belgium

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.ugent.be

Total budget: EUR 401 765.00

ERDF budget: EUR 200 882.00

Syddansk Universitet (SDU)

Name: Syddansk Universitet (SDU)

Address: Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.sdu.dk

Total budget: EUR 154 100.00

ERDF budget: EUR 77 050.00

Upside Energy

Name: Upside Energy

Address: 64 The Crescent, CW9 8AD Northwich, Cheshire, United Kingdom

Legal status: private

Website: https://upsideenergy.co.uk

Vejle Kommune

Name: Vejle Kommune

Address: Skolegade 1, 7100 Vejle, Denmark

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.vejle.dk

Gemeente Haarlem

Name: Gemeente Haarlem

Address: Grote Markt 2, 2011RD Haarlem, Netherlands

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.haarlem.nl

Total budget: EUR 68 084.00

ERDF budget: EUR 34 042.00

Partners map

Partners and Projects info

Municipality Zaanstad

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Essex County Council

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Gate2Growth

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Graham Oakes Ltd

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Intercommunale Leiedal

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Middelfart Municipality

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Province of West-Flanders

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Southend on Sea Borough Council

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Universiteit Gent

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Syddansk Universitet

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Upside Energy

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Vejle Municipality

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Partners and Projects info

Municipality Haarlem

Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Lead partner

Project partner

Summary

Project name (EN): Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Project acronym: EMPOWER2.0

Project start date: 2019-01-01

Project end date: 2022-12-31

Project status: closed

Relevant precedent projects:

City-zen, FP7
E-Harbours
CARPE DIEM, ERDF
2imprezs

Relevant linked projects:

cVPP
Buurzame Stroom, Horizon 2020
Co2mmunity
LECSEA
Stronghouse
RE/SOURCED
ConnectHeat, LIFE
SUPRA, FP-7
ACCESS, Horizon 2020
PROSEU, Horizon 2020
FlexCOOP, Horizon 2020

Total budget/expenditure: EUR 4 645 802.00

Total EU funding (amount): EUR 2 322 900.00

Co-financing sources:

ERDF: Amount, .

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

Financing programme

2014 - 2020 INTERREG VB North Sea

Last month that data in keep.eu was retrieved from the Programme's website or received from the Programme

2023-02-14

No. of projects in keep.eu / Total no. of projects (% of projects in keep.eu)

73 / 73 (100%)

No. of project partnerships in keep.eu / Total no. of project partnerships (% of project partnerships in keep.eu)

871 / 871 (100%)

Notes on the data

Information provided by the Programme. Achievements were retrieved by Interact from the Programme website (http://www.northsearegion.eu/), or a website directly linked from it, on 2021-09-20 and 2023-01-12.

The financial data featured in keep.eu for this programme, it's projects and its partners is not exact and should be taken as a reference only.

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Empowering the citizens - Towards European Energy Market 2.0 (Enabling More People’s OWnership in Energy tRansition)

Description

Thematic information

Partners (14)

Partners map

Summary

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

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