Italy | Marchigian Energy Communities in Europe
The Marche Region participates as a partner in the Express project - European Regions that promote energy self-sufficiency from renewable sources, funded by the Interreg Europe program, through the Energy Sources, waste, quarries and mines sector by virtue of the specific skills assigned to it in the field of energy sources and sustainable construction.
On 5 December 2024, the Policy Learning Platform of Interreg Europe, which aims to promote the transposition of Community policies based on good practices relating to regional development policies, organised its own meeting at the request of the Marche Region, as a partner of the project and as a Regional Management Authority for sustainable energy, in order to examine how to develop a call for proposals to be published in 2025 worth €6 million financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the ERDF MARCHE 2021-2027 PROGRAMME (POR), to support energy communities. The meeting was held in Budapest, following the workshop "Energy Communities: Building Citizen Acceptance and Engagement’.
The activities of the Express Project were officially launched on 1 March 2023 and will end in February 2027 with the aim of increasing the share of renewable energy and energy self-sufficiency in the participating regions and improving regional strategies and enabling a rapid transition to locally produced renewable energy for heating, electricity and transport. “The Marche Region – explains the Councillor for Energy Production and Distribution Andrea Maria Antonini – is focusing heavily on the development of local energy communities. As part of the project implementation activities, the partners have the opportunity to exchange their experiences on energy self-sufficiency and the use of renewable energy. By participating in the project, the Marche Region intends to explore and find useful solutions to be transferred to the regional territory in terms of low-carbon energy communities”.
Within the strategic objective 2.2.1.2 of the Operational Programme, the Region can support and promote actions for the creation of energy communities aimed at the production/consumption of energy from renewable sources that also include smart grid systems and the application of innovative and/or high-efficiency technologies.
The meeting, managed by the regional project manager, was attended by the thematic experts in the low carbon economy of the Interreg Europe programme as well as three experts representing 3 specific European projects on energy communities. The working group exchanged experiences in terms of solutions on how to refine the eligibility criteria, the identification of eligible costs, how to communicate; on how to maximise the impact of the allocation of the 6 million euro of funds on the ground; This first meeting was followed by a second one promoted by ALEC (Local Energy and Climate Agency of the Bordeaux and Gironde metropolitan area) on how local stakeholders, with particular reference to Public Authorities, can be involved in energy community projects.
On both occasions, 5 examples of energy communities present and active in the Marche Region were presented: ‘CERossini’, an energy community in Montelabbate, one of the first energy communities operating in the Marche region; the case of the 3 nationally funded energy communities (funds of the Extraordinary Commissioner for Reconstruction 2016); the Energy Communities in the Municipality of Falconara Marittima, the first municipality that has approved the outline of a memorandum of understanding consistent with the regional model, an energy community in the Municipality of Jesi that includes non-profit organizations and the Leaf Community Loccioni - a private all-electric microgrid powered by self-produced renewable energy.