Call for projects to support electricity sharing through the creation of energy communities

By project REC4EU

Published on 10 July 2024

Belgium

Extra-Regio NUTS 2

About this good practice

The call aims to boost the development of energy communities based in Wallonia

To do so, the call supports two kinds of project:

Single: the development of a single emerging community, that legally still not exists

Multiple: the creation of at least 3 communities led by a managing entity offering:
• Technical, management, legal, tax, accounting, economic and/or communication support
• Or support by creating cross-disciplinary tools and/or coordinating different energy community projects, to encourage the sharing of information and experience, thereby fostering the emergence of shared expertise on a regional scale, where appropriate in each sector of activity or specific environment.

The call targets only energy communities that implement an energy sharing and applicants that are legal entities based in Wallonia in both the private and public sectors.

The aid is granted in the form of a subsidy.

The criteria of selection are:

• Adequacy of the project with government policies on electricity sharing

• The feasibility and technical & financial quality of the project (amount requested vs. quality/content/relevance of the proposed deliverables).

• The impact, in terms of the efficiency of the project itself & its replicability

• Credibility of the schedule of the project

• Bonus for projects focusing on 3 elements :
▪ the most vulnerable members of the public,
▪ non-market players
▪ and/or buildings badly isolated

Resources needed

Financial: the budget of the call is 7 million. To achieve substantial results several million are needed.

Human resources are needed to write the call, select the projects (a jury of external experts) & follow-up the selected projects with monitoring activities

Evidence of success

As an evidence, about 100 energy communities’ projects have applied to the call. That’s a huge number for Wallonia where there are only 4-5 existing communities. The whole budget will be used.

Energy communities & energy sharing, as new concepts, need to be encouraged by public authorities. Their implementation raises technical, legal and market issues that still need to be solved. If we want frontrunners we need to fund their work and subsidize not (yet) profitable business models.

Potential for learning or transfer

First, a call is a familiar policy for most European public authorities. Calls are also mostly regulated by common European rules. Secondly, energy communities & energy sharing are new concepts all over Europe. The need to financially support them is the same everywhere.

Two elements might be inspiring:

• The will of the Region to go beyond a support of single project. The category “multiple project” targets to support transversal outputs that might be useful for a large number of energy communities : to train managing entities, raise expertise of actors on legal, technical, communication or economic issues and skills or create tools (digital tools for energy sharing management, communication tools to raise awareness or mobilize or recruiting participants).

• The will to support projects including non-market players and vulnerable people is also very relevant. Such actors are less likely to be frontrunners. It makes sense to provide an extra support to these projects.