By standarasing and aggregating projects, CEFS (Community Energy Financing Schemes) facilitate investment in multiple energy communities simultaneously, ensuring streamlined market access. Private investors no longer need to gather information on individual projects, or undergo a time-consuming and risky due diligence process.
Private financing institutions
The opportunities of financing energy communities through CEFS
The energy landscape is evolving rapidly, making it difficult to follow. CEFS are tailored financing mechanisms designed to effectively channel investments into community-driven renewable energy projects.
By standardizing and aggregating projects, CEFS facilitate investment in multiple energy communities simultaneously, ensuring streamlined market access. Private investors no longer need to gather information on individual projects, or undergo a time-consuming and risky due diligence process.
📌 The study on financial instruments and models for services and prosumers, published by the Investors Dialogue on Energy platform of the European Commission, highlights that aggregation and standardization are essential for attracting private capital, which would otherwise struggle to finance energy communities individually.
Moreover, CEFS help mitigate financial risk not only by offering a diversified portfolio of projects but also through their deep understanding of the energy communities ecosystem. CEFS managers (often an energy communities’ secondary structure, such as a Federation) also play a key role in transferring skills to projects, making sure projects are actually successfully implemented and enhancing investment opportunities.
Success stories
Different success stories are highlighted on ACCE’s website :
📌 In the Netherlands, public investments in Energie Samen’s CEFS triggered private funding from a commercial bank. Given the first loss beared by public funds, and the strong expertise of Energie Samen as CEFS manager, Rabobank positively assessed investing in the extension of the Realisation fund.
📌 In France, Energie Partagée Investissement raises most of its capital from private citizen investors (84% of the shareholders). It also keeps an open opportunity for private institutions to take shares in the fund. An opportunity seized by several of them, mostly asset management companies specializing in sustainable investment.
📌 Over ACCE, GoiEner is launching a pilot CEFS aiming at bridging the gap between ethical financiers and citizen-led energy communities in Spain. It has already successfully onboarded 2 ethical banks (Coop57 and Fiare Banca Etica) and helped 8 communities access more than 500 000 euros.
The impact of the ACCE project extends beyond its partners. In Italy, the RESPIRA project aims at kickstarting innovative community energy financing. It gathers cooperative organisations, public financing institutions, a philanthropic foundation and several major Italian banks.
Getting started:How to seize the opportunities offered by CEFS?
1 - Engage with energy communities and their secondary structures
Get in touch with energy communities and its secondary structures in your region.
Our webinar explored innovative Community Energy Financing Schemes across Europe and strategies to accelerate citizen energy initiatives through structured funding mechanisms. The session featured two insightful case studies: 1) Belgium Case Study: Karel Derveaux from Ecopower presented the cooperative's successful model in Flanders. Their approach demonstrates how citizen-driven cooperatives can effectively finance and operate renewable energy projects. 2) Croatian Perspective: Goran Cacic from ZEZ (Green Energy Cooperative) shared examples from Croatia, highlighting the growing interest in community energy projects in Eastern Europe.
The ACCE project has built knowledge upon the successful experiences of Energy4All, Energie Samen and Energie Partagée. It is also empowering 5 energy community players to set up the ground for developing their own Community Energy Financing Schemes. As such, the knowledge built within the ACCE project is back by hand-on experimentations and trials. In our webinar, we present the tools and learnings from the project.
Are you an energy community that has often found it impossible to finance your projects due to a lack of confidence on the investor side? Are you an investor interested in a just and democratic energy transition but do not want to take big risks? Then we recommend you watch the first webinar of the ACCE project!
This guide aims at facilitating the set-up of a CEFS. For doing so, it identifies the main barriers, and their resulting bottlenecks to set up a CEFS, and highlights solutions to overcome those barriers and transform obstacles into opportunities.
If you want to reach energy communities and their financing partners in your region, Rescoop will guide you through their members and partners.
Contact: chris.vrettos@rescoop.eu
The ACCE project has received funding from the LIFE Programme of the European Union.
Disclaimer: The ACCE website reflects the views of the project partnership and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
