Community and bottom-up transitions in energy and climate change adaption, including energy communities

On 4 October, the Green Deal Call Projects Support Office (GD-SO) produced a webinar entitled Community and bottom-up transitions in energy and climate change adaption, including energy communities.  This webinar brought together projects from the Green Deal call and external projects to exchange views and experiences on different bottom-up approaches applied to reinforce the energy transition with a particular emphasis on challenges faced in applying these approaches, as well as incorporate examples from outside the EU, by including a project working on energy transition in Africa. 

You can watch the webinar here.
 

The webinar discussion was based on the fact that production and use of energy accounts for more than 75% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonising existing energy generation and improving energy efficiency is critical to achieving the ambitions of the Green Deal and will need new approaches and innovative technologies. Community and bottom-up transitions in energy and climate change adaptation involve responses by local and grassroots initiatives to address the climate crisis and sustainable energy systems. These approaches recognise the importance of local knowledge, participation, and empowerment in addressing the challenges posed by climate change. Energy communities are a unique example, introduced by the Clean Energy package adopted by the EU in 2019. These are citizen-driven initiatives that contribute to the clean energy transition, advancing energy efficiency within local communities. Such communities organise collective energy actions that help pave the way for a clean energy transition while moving citizens to the fore. These entities also increase public acceptance of renewable energy projects and make attracting private investments in the clean energy transition easier.