As part of its engagement in the ‘Community Power Coalition’, ICLEI is working with a diverse group of organisations to engage the European Commission on the issue of community energy. This alliance recently published a letter addressed to the Commission, containing ideas for a resilient recovery, which is currently being followed-up on with a joint dialogue.

This collaboration between a number of organisations, collectively called the “Community Power Coalition”, promotes the development of citizen and community energy ownership, as part of the urgently needed energy transition towards a 100% renewable energy system.

In May 2020, the Coalition published an open letter to Frans Timmermans, the European Commission's Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal, and Kadri Simson, Commissioner for Energy, urging them to increase the role played by citizen and community ownership of renewable energy in the European Green Deal and the EU Next Generation Recovery Package, as well as to strengthen the European Climate Pact's ability to create lasting change.

Specifically, the 'Community Power Coalition' calls for the European Commission to:

• Promote and finance community led local development as a means to support a just recovery
• Provide specific support to citizen-led renovations under the Renovation Wave
• Provide easier access to EFSI and EIB investment tools for energy communities
• Earmark financing for renewable energy communities in the renewable energy financing mechanism for EU-wide projects
• Set up a designated financing facility (e.g. under H2020) and a secretariat for energy communities
• Make all government bailouts of industry conditional on being used to immediately start the transition to decarbonise their operations, and include a trajectory to reach climate neutrality by 2030
• Support feed-in tariffs and other financing schemes for energy communities in economic stimulus packages
• Ensure member states have the support and resources they need to transpose the Renewable Energy Directive and the Electricity Market Directive in a timely and adequate manner.

The first meeting between the European Commission and the Coalition took place in September. ICLEI will continue to support this work based on the interest of its members and drawing on expertise from several Horizon2020 projects working to include citizens in the energy transition. These projects include PROSEU, DECIDE, WinWind, SONNET, SMARTEES and RUGGEDISED.

Learn more about ICLEI's work to facilitate and support the energy transition and establish energy communities that support the fight against climate change here.