Expected Impact:

Proposals should present the concrete results which will be delivered by the activities and demonstrate how these results will contribute to the topic-specific impacts. This demonstration should rely on a solid analysis of the current situation, realistic assumptions and baselines, and establish clear causality links between proposed activities, results and impacts.

In terms of qualitative impact, proposals under this topic should demonstrate how they will contribute to the following outcomes, as relevant:

• Scope A: Creation of (or expansion) of the services delivered by second level communities to their members and other communities. The new mutualised services should be tested and operational by the end of the project and the support to new energy community projects needs to have led to some initial results in terms of project implementation.
• Scope B: Measurable progress towards the implementation of energy community projects in the focus areas listed above thanks to the provision of tailored peer‑to‑peer learning and targeted assistance.

In terms of quantitative impact, proposals should quantify their results and impacts using the indicators provided for the topic, when they are relevant for the proposed activities. The results and impacts should be quantified for the end of the project and for 5 years after the end of the project. The quantitative indicators for both scopes include:

• Number of energy community projects triggered thanks to the project
• Number of energy communities benefiting from the support of the project
• Number and type of stakeholders with increased skills

For Scope A, applicants will also need to define and quantify indicators related to the set-up and expansion of second level communities including:

• Number of second-level communities created thanks to the project
• Amount of direct and personalised support made available to energy community project developers (full-time equivalent person months)

For Scope B, applicants will also need to define and quantify eventual additional indicators:

• related to the peer-to-peer process
• related to project implementation (e.g. MWth/MW of capacity installed, buildings renovated, new members engaged in the communities thanks to the project action, number of members benefiting from new/scaled activities, number of households enrolled in flexibility, energy poor or vulnerable citizens benefiting from the projects).

Proposals under both scopes should also provide indicators which are specific to their proposed activities.

All proposals should also quantify their impacts related to the following common indicators for the LIFE CET sub-programme:

• Primary energy savings triggered by the project in GWh/year
• Final energy savings triggered by the project in GWh/year
• Renewable energy generation triggered by the project (in GWh/year), specifying the type of renewable energy triggered
• Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (in tCO2-eq/year)
• Investments in sustainable energy (energy efficiency and renewable energy) triggered by the project (cumulative, in million Euro).

Funding rate

Other Action Grants (OAGs) — 95% 

Objective:

Energy communities have been widely recognised as key actors in the EU energy system for their potential contribution in achieving the Union’s 2030 and 2050 energy and climate targets. As part of the Citizens Energy Package^[1], the European Commission delivered guidance for Member States on measures to unleash the potential energy communities and energy self-consumption and engaged itself to publish an Energy Communities Action Plan.

Some energy communities are already providing professional services to members and other communities at scale. However, most energy communities in Europe remain relatively small and primarily focused on solar photovoltaic projects. While these initiatives have been instrumental in engaging citizens and local authorities in renewable energy generation, many face challenges when attempting to diversify or professionalise their activities, adopt new business models, or scale up their operations. Targeted support is therefore needed to help energy communities evolve beyond first-generation solar projects—for example, towards collective heating and cooling systems, flexibility and storage services, integrated local energy management or one-stop-shop services to other communities.

Energy community initiatives enable citizens, businesses and local authorities to invest directly in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects while promoting local ownership of energy assets. At the same time, energy communities can deliver additional societal benefits, including lower energy costs, local job creation, and enhanced social cohesion and inclusion. Today, more than 8,000 community energy initiatives are active across Europe, yet their development remains uneven among Member States, and several promising business models where energy communities could generate added value are still insufficiently explored.

Experience from past projects shows that mentoring, mutualisation and knowledge exchange among community actors are highly effective in overcoming development barriers and supporting scaling‑up efforts. On the one hand, peer‑to‑peer support can unlock the potential of energy communities in complex areas such as heating systems or flexibility services, where targeted mentoring can help navigate technical and organisational challenges. On the other hand, secondary structures or federations of energy communities – often supported by public authorities – have proven effective in assisting others by pooling resources and services. These so‑called “second‑level communities” provide added value by, for example, offering technical assistance, sharing operation and maintenance services, improving access to financing and innovative business models, and forming strategic partnerships to ensure that regulatory frameworks effectively reflect local needs.

The EU is facing important increases in energy prices, driven by market volatility and exacerbated by its dependence on imported fossil fuels. A key priority for the EU is to strengthen the resilience of its energy system vis-a-vis geopolitical crises impacting the global energy market. Therefore, applicants under this topic are invited, where possible, to develop and implement long-term structural sustainable and energy efficiency measures to enhance EU energy system resilience against future crises, in coherence with short-term energy relief measures needed to respond to the current shock on the global energy markets.

Scope:

Proposals should address only one of the two scopes detailed below. The specific scope should be clearly mentioned in the proposal.

Scope A: Support to “second level communities”

This scope focuses on “second level communities” which are coalitions that represent, aggregate and serve multiple energy communities within a city, region or country.

Proposals may target the emergence of new second level communities AND/OR the consolidation and professionalisation of existing second level communities. The justification for creating new structures must be grounded in a thorough analysis of their national and regional context and their added value should be clearly explained.

Proposals should clearly describe governance structures, decision making processes and how member communities participate and exercise democratic control.

Proposals should define clear objectives for the second level communities to be created or reinforced. In particular, they should specify what they intend to achieve in the following areas:

• mutualising services for member communities (e.g. legal, technical, financial, communication),
• supporting the development and implementation of new energy community projects, and
• the long-term role they aim to play in their ecosystem (e.g. “one stop shop”, back-office service provider for energy communities, knowledge hub, etc.).

Proposals should:

• Design a service portfolio responding to the needs of current and prospective member communities. The services selected must be clearly justified and proposals should demonstrate that there is demand for them.
• Define target numbers and types of communities to be supported by the planned activities.
• If proposals foresee structured capacity building activities for member and prospective communities, these must be clearly explained and build on existing materials.
• Where relevant, proposals may describe approaches to make energy communities more inclusive.
• Where relevant, applicants may describe how they will facilitate collaboration in financing, for example by pooling project pipelines, coordinating joint applications to funding programmes, supporting access to finance, or developing shared investment vehicles and standardised contracts.
• Where relevant, proposals may explain how they will help initiate and incubate new energy communities in areas without existing initiatives and strengthen existing communities through training, coaching and peer learning.

Proposals should also present a financially viable economic model, including an assessment of operating costs and expected revenue for the second level communities targeted to continue beyond the project duration and explain how services and outputs will be designed for scalability and replication.

Scope B: Support for energy communities to implement projects in emerging areas

Proposals should focus on facilitating the implementation of energy projects led by energy communities in at least one of the following focus areas:

• Renewable heating and cooling^[2]
• Energy efficiency measures in buildings
• Provision of flexibility services (demand response, community energy storage, smart charging, participation in dynamic tariffs, aggregation of member assets, and intra‑ or inter‑community peer‑to‑peer trading)
• Electromobility services supporting the integration of renewable energy sources

The objectives of the assistance to communities provided by the project must be concrete, measurable and clearly linked to the implementation of the above-listed solutions.

Proposals should clearly identify specific energy community projects that peer-to-peer activities can support. The planned support should include peer-to-peer exchanges and, where relevant, other targeted assistance to facilitate concrete implementation. Where the support from external experts is foreseen, their role should be to support and complement peer learning, not substitute it.

Capacity building activities may focus on communities but can also include other relevant local actors (municipal officials, housing providers, DSOs, installers).

The roles of participating communities should be clearly defined. Established energy communities with experience in the proposed area(s) of intervention and energy communities willing to start developing a project or activity in those areas should be either directly involved in the consortium or their concrete commitment and involvement in the project should be clearly demonstrated in the proposal. Cross-country or cross-region peer-to-peer learning is encouraged if it can clearly add value.

Approaches that aim to promote inclusion and energy poverty alleviation are encouraged.

Proposals should demonstrate how their proposed activities are embedded in and coherent with relevant local and national strategies (e.g. local heating and cooling plans).

For both scopes A and B:

• Projects should focus on supporting renewable energy communities (RECs) according to the amending Renewable Energy Directive^[3] and/or citizen energy communities (CECs) according to the EU Electricity Market Design Directive^[4].
• Proposals should make use of already existing framework analyses (e.g. for the legal frameworks already made available by the European Energy Communities Facility and the Citizen Energy Advisory Hub) and not foresee additional ones unless their added value is clearly explained.
• Proposals should not develop any new tools, databases, or digital platforms unless their added value compared to existing ones is clearly justified and their potential scale-up beyond the project convincingly addressed.
• Consortia applying should demonstrate the support from stakeholders necessary to ensure the success of the project and a convincing strategy to engage other strategic stakeholders such as municipalities, regions, financial institutions, housing providers, NGOs and social services. Where relevant, actions to facilitate the collaboration with Distribution System Operators and other market participants such as commercial suppliers or aggregators can also be planned.

Proposals must be submitted by at least 3 applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities) from 3 different eligible countries.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to 1.75 million EUR would allow the specific objectives to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.