Funding Programme: Horizon 2020

Duration: May 2019 – April 2022 

Website: citizee.eu

Description: The energy transition causes significant challenges in the building sector, which demand profound changes not only on the economic perspective, such as implementing innovative financial models to overcome financial barriers, but also fostering cooperation between all actors involved, paying particular attention to citizens and communities. It is essential to advance the business cases for energy efficiency measures and to increase support for respective projects, by standardising citizen financing in investment programs. There is therefore a need to consider the role of different actors (public authorities, financial institutions, project developers) and the interactions with innovative citizen models, particularly at the regional/national scale. The main objective of CitizEE is to support European public authorities to scale up investments for energy efficiency in the building sector through attracting citizen private investments. By integrating tailored and widely adopted crowdfunding and cooperative financing schemes with adequate available or to be developed Public Financing Instruments (PFIs), CitizEE will enable to set up large-scale community energy efficiency programs while strengthening know-how of regional/national key stakeholders. 

Our role: EUROCROWD is responsible for leading the sustainability and exploitation activities of the project, among which the organisation of one EU Policy Workshop intended to introduce and discuss with an EU-policy makers audience with the project’s recommendations, 3 replication workshops addressed to EU regions/local authorities representations, clusters and networks, and 1 Final Event, specifically focused on presenting the project’s sustainability plan. 

Expected results:

• 8 GWh/year of primary energy savings triggered by the project
• 18,6 Million EUR investments in sustainable energy triggered by the project
• Delivery of at least 4 standardized CFs4EE Financing Schemes for financing EE upgrades, according to the inherent conditions of each pilot country/region
• 318 new regional and national aggregators trained through targeted events and capacity building activities at regional and EU level, with demonstrated/traceable capacity to set up largescale pipeline of (standardized) sustainable energy investments
• At least 4 Citizen Investment Platforms in Portugal, Belgium, Croatia and Lithuania will be established, providing a comprehensive range of support and/or services to facilitate access to energy efficiency finance

Project partners:

• WIP Renewables Energy, Germany (Project Coordinator)
• Energinvest, Belgium
• The Foundation for Environmental Energy Law, Germany
• Power Parity, Portugal
• Flemish Energy Company, Belgium
• North-West Croatia Regional Energy Agency, Croatia
• Public Investment Development Company, Lithuania
• European Crowdfunding Network, Belgium