Green Net Finland is a part of a consortium implementing new European INTERREG BSR funded development project “Co2mmunity”. The project website is now launched at http://co2mmunity.eu/.

What is community energy?

Community energy (CE) projects offer enhanced production of renewable energies (RE) from local sources (wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, geothermal) through active participation of local communities. Together, citizens co-finance, co-develop, and co-operate RE plants, and foster sustainable energy distribution, like local heating networks or biogas filling stations. Through active communication, transparent decision-making, and local benefit sharing CE projects have high social acceptance. Consequently, fostering CE projects is highly promising for increasing the share of RE in the BSR.

Who benefits from our project?

No comprehensive documents about CE exist in the BSR. Co2mmunity’s objectives are to create this CE knowledge base and to enhance the institutional capacities of Municipalities, institutions responsible for regional energy planning, political decision-makers, and energy and citizen’s associations for facilitating CE projects.

What will we do?

Core to our approach are renewable energy cooperative partnerships (RENCOP) that initiate and support CE projects. In each partner region Co2mmunity will initiate and manage a RENCOP. A transnational exchange of RENCOPs will result in a transferable RENCOP model/roadmap, enabling a transnational catch-up process between frontrunners and followers as well as enhancing the capacity of local, regional and BSR-wide actors to foster CE. Beyond this, we will develop a synthesis report on the current CE situation in the BSR, including a best practice compilation. It will showcase success factors of CE projects that are transferable across contexts. We will also develop locally specific CE handbooks and white papers for public stakeholders.

Read more about Co2mmunity project at the website!