ERDF funds for energy communities in Marche Region

Ask the existing communities what challenges they have faced and design the details of the new call around their identified needs and their suggestions of what should be done. This bottom-up approach was used in Gironde, France.

The region should work with the stakeholders ahead of the call to raise awareness on the type of energy community projects the Region seeks to fund and to clarify what costs are eligible and what maturity the applicants should have. Questions could arise regarding energy community establishment costs or if applicants should already have a legal structure for their new energy community. It would be good to work with an existing structure that works on energy democracy topics to spread the word about the call.

If the call targets new energy communities AND requires for applicants to have a legal entity for their new energy community AND requires detailed information on the intended renewable energy project, including rights to use a roof or rights to use the land, then there is a risk that only mature projects proposed by professional applicants are fast enough to submit by the call deadline. To avoid this, communication must start months before the call is published. The call should be open long enough to allow for citizen-led initiatives for formalise their energy community and to get their project ready. Or a two-stage-call could be the more elegant solution.

To allow for truly citizen-led initiatives that don’t have a legal entity yet and whose renewable energy projects are not yet mature, the call could be designed in two stages: The first part could offer a small lump-sum amount for setting up a new energy community, creating a legal entity, identifying and making a pre-feasibility of a renewable energy project. At stage two, the call could offer funding for the project implementation itself. This would allow to build a funnel of new initiatives. Applicants could go to the stage of the call that is suitable for them (no obligation to use stage one). A negative result of the feasibility study would be an acceptable outcome of stage one. The call from Aquitaine is also staged and has adapted support for 5 different stages of maturity of the energy community, from concept – to project management- to investment, acquisition of external expertise; technical feasibility studies.

Just launching a call without building in restrictions can attract private players, e.g., fossil fuel companies, that are quicker and better organised than emerging energy communities. The call text could exclude large companies and allow only (regional) SMEs. It should contain strict conditions on governance of the applicant. It could reward specifically the number of citizens represented by each project.

The call should contain a maximum amount per project so that a single project does not capture all of the total available call budget. The call from Aquitaine Region contains differentiated maximum funding depending on type of project (different for PV, wind and bioenergy).

The call from Aquitaine contains a differentiated system for rewarding proposals that e.g. rewards truly citizen-led initiatives by giving extra points for higher numbers of citizens involved in projects. Extra points are also given for using local contractors, for an innovative nature of the project, etc. Marche could get inspired by the evaluation system of Aquitaine.