Citizen Energy Communities: Engaging People and Technologies in the Future of Energy

This workshop shed light on the importance of engaging people and unlocking the potential of  technologies to promote Energy Communities and meet the EU’s ambition of a joint net-zero emission of  greenhouse gases by the year 2050. To ensure a people-centric, sustainable, just and innovative energy  future, citizens, and experts must be brought into dialogue to co-design new ways of organising around  energy. 

To approach these challenges, four Horizon 2020 sister projects (Creators, LocalRES, Hestia, and  Lightness) illustrated approaches, strategies, and solutions being tested in different typologies of Energy  Communities. Instead of a techno-centric approach, these projects presented their methods to engage  people and co-design technologies to forward a clean and fair energy transition. The Creators project showed how stakeholder needs in industrial sites are met using technologies; LocalRES drove reflections  about the role of local representatives and citizens in co-designing technologies and Energy Communities;  Hestia delivered conclusions about how engagement and gender inclusion, paired with energy and digital  literacy, can boost the effectiveness of demand response technologies; and the Lightness project illustrated how an environmental justice framework is being implemented to co-create Energy Communities through technological and social innovation. A high-level dialogue was drawn by the experiences of these  real cases, and it aimed to contribute to the decentralisation, decarbonization and democratisation of energy.

Participating projects with related presentations: 

• Creators (PDF)
• LocalRES (PDF)
• Hestia (PDF)
• Lightness (PDF)

Session Chair: Tatiana Loureiro,  R2M Solution