Energy communities are pivotal to engage citizens in accelerating the clean energy transition but they face specific challenges and structural barriers in accessing financing. Public institutions can leverage the concept of Community energy financing schemes (CEFS) to efficiently lower these barriers and achieve political objectives.
Public institutions can support energy communities in accessing finance through different mechanisms:
1 - Engage with energy communities and their secondary structures
Public institutions can leverage their expertise to survey barriers and tailor solutions for better access to finance.
📌 REScoop.eu is the European federation of energy communities, gathering a growing network of 2500 energy communities. The LIFE COMET project is also currently supporting the creation of national coalitions for community energy in Central and Eastern European countries.
📌The ACCE’s RES Development Guide presents a strong set of solutions to overcome barriers and establishes a solid foundation for dialogue.
2 - Explore how you can contribute to enabling frameworks
Enabling frameworks can support the development of community energy financing through different mechanisms, such as capacity building at the institutional level and an effective transposition of European Union Directives.
📌 The ACCE’s Report on Enabling Framework explores 7 key conditions to establish a supportive framework for energy communities.
3 - Contribute to funding
Public institutions can play a crucial role in launching a CEFS by funding its initial phase and supporting its further development. Additionally, they can provide financial support to existing CEFS :
by directly providing some of funds that the CEFS will use to finance energy communities: in this case, the CEFS stands as an intermediary for the use of this public funds (in ways of loans, for instance).
by engaging funds to mitigate risk for other investors, in “first public loss” or guarantee schemes: in this case, public funding will be used only for projects’ failures, thus reducing their volume used
📌 ACCE’s Financial Handbook highlights examples of CEFS receiving public funding.
📌 ACCE’s Mapping of EU funding sources is a comprehensive review of the existing funding landscape for energy communities within the European Union budget.
📌 ACCE’s Regulatory framework analysis stands as a practical guide, to help navigate the regulatory landscape and support community energy financing.
Resources
This report explores the critical elements required to establish a supportive enabling framework for energy communities across Europe. It highlights the challenges faced by energy communities in the five ACCE replication countries (Croatia, Romania, Germany, Spain, and Belgium) and provides tailored recommendations to address these challenges.
Deliverable 6.1 provides an overview of the legal framework for Community Energy Financing Schemes (CEFSs) under Work Package 6 of the LIFE ACCE project. It focuses on European-level barriers, identified through interviews with partners and experts. Rather than a full legal review, this report serves as a practical guide, drawing on project partners' experiences.
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.
In this guide, we identify the main types of CEFSs that energy communities could use. We also describe the key characteristics and and success factors of each of these CEFS.
A report that focuses on isolating the success factors as well as the barriers encountered by the most prominent CEFS.
Extra resources:
Contact:
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.
