Renewable energy communities are in fashion - according to many of the participants at yesterday’s COME RES final conference held in Brussels. The concepts of local ownership, collective self-consumption and energy sharing are increasing in popularity throughout Europe - often seen as an answer to the current energy crisis. Held in the Museum of Natural Sciences, the conference – ‘Advancing renewable energy communities in Europe: Affordable energy. Local ownership. Resilience’ brought together over 80 energy community stakeholders, municipalities, policy-makers and academics to discuss the findings and key results of the project.

The topics of the sessions ranged from policy debates on how to best enable renewable energy communities for a just transition, to lessons learned from the transfer of certain elements of best practice energy communities across borders. To demonstrate the commitments among ‘transfer teams’, also beyond the timeline of the COME RES project, several representatives from the COME RES target regions concluded their presentations by signing MoUs on future collaboration.

The event concluded with an interactive exercise, giving all participants the opportunity to exchange directly with representatives from the nine COME RES country desks – from Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany, Latvia, The Netherlands, Belgium (Flanders), Italy and Norway. During this lively exercise participants discussed how the concept is perceived, their success stories, as well as local obstacles faced in promoting energy communities in their regions.

Despite numerous acknowledgements that renewable energy communities are on the rise, it was clear that many changes – not least those highlighted in the long and clear list of COME RES policy recommendations - are needed from all stakeholders involved to ensure that renewable energy communities stay in fashion not only for the niche, but also for mainstream society.

See the photos of the event.
View the PPT presentations and agenda for more details of the individual sessions and speakers.
Read the COME RES final publication.