Proposals should focus on one of the two actions below:

• Set up energy communities led by or supported by relevant public authorities aimed at supporting the achievement of local and regional energy policy objectives and actively and democratically engage citizens in investments and decision-making.
• Develop support services for energy communities (e.g. One-Stop-Shops or other facilitation structures) supplying technical support to energy community projects by reducing the complexity of the process, simplifying decision making and stimulating the execution of projects. As a result of their work, these services should lead to local energy community investment pipelines. The design of the services is to be justified in each proposal taking into account the local context and existing support mechanisms.

In order to deliver on the actions above, proposals are encouraged to consider including some of the elements below (among other possible actions):

• Provision of technical support to enable actors to set-up an energy community (e.g. licencing, energy commercialisation, business models, legal aspects).
• Training and capacity building on energy community development for local and regional authority officials, local communities and other relevant local actors.
• Creation of a supportive local policy framework for the development of energy community projects (e.g. through community participation or investment quotas or public procurement).
• Support of active engagement and democratic governance by citizens in energy communities.
• Facilitation of energy communities’ access to financial resources (e.g. through guarantees, seed funding for revolving funds, technical support for the early stages of project development, aggregation of small projects).
• Development of services to support the operational phase of existing energy communities and/or enabling communities to pool resources for project development and operation (e.g. by creating umbrella communities/coalitions).
• Development of specific support measures (or streamline access to existing ones) for specific target groups such as energy vulnerable and energy poor households.

Proposals submitted under this topic should aim at fostering communities fitting the definition of “renewable energy community”. They should adequately take into account participation and governance differences between both concepts.

Project applicants may choose to focus on one or more activities related to sustainable energy (production, transmission, distribution, energy efficiency, demand-response, etc.).

Priority will be given to proposals that develop areas in which community energy is less developed (in their specific context) including building renovation, heating and cooling or renewable gas market.

Proposals should demonstrate the support of the stakeholders which are necessary to ensure the success of the action (in particular, local or regional authorities).

Pilots can be energy communities or support services for communities. Proposals should justify the potential for synergies between the selected pilots.

Proposals should make use of existing initiatives, networks and platforms as relevant and demonstrate that the EU funding will be used in an effective way by delivering actions that complement existing initiatives (e.g. national enabling frameworks for energy communities and the European Energy Communities Facility).

Actions should contribute to fostering the collaboration between local/regional authorities and citizen-led-initiatives in the field of energy and build on the tools and resources of existing Horizon and LIFE projects, as well as initiatives such as the Energy Communities Repository and Rural Energy Community Advisory Hub.

Projects should analyse and justify the effectiveness of different approaches to tackle the barriers of different sub-types of energy communities they intend to support (e.g. municipal-driven communities, citizen-driven communities, communities involving vulnerable citizens, communities in rural contexts) at different stages of professionalisation and foresee the provision of policy feedback.

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