Funding Programme: Horizon 2020

Duration: May 2019 – April 2022

Website:http://www.comets-project.eu/

Description:  There are large knowledge gaps around the enabling of the low carbon energy system transition in a smooth and participative way, ensuring that citizens are at the centre of the required fundamental transformation and enabling that their creative potential is fully used. Social innovation is a prime way to tap that potential while Collective Action Initiatives (CAIs), a social innovation in themselves, are a prime way to mobilize people and to ensure the acceptance for and participation in a necessary transition process. However, both social innovation and CAIs lack proper scientific and field-tested understanding of their development and factors for success. As of today, the role of citizen-driven CAIs (e.g. energy communities, cooperatives, purchasing groups) and their contribution to the energy transition has neither been quantified at an aggregate level, nor has their contribution potential been estimated or understood in sufficient depth. The COMETS project aims to fill the knowledge gaps by quantifying the European-wide aggregate contribution of CAIs to the energy transition at national and European levels by investigating their evolution and scaling up at an in-depth level in six selected countries.

Our role: EUROCROWD is mainly involved in supporting, by the exploitation of this networks, the communication and dissemination activities (WP7) and the response rate of the survey (WP3) but it will also provide contribution to the context analysis at national level with regard to the financial aspects of CAIs development (WP4).

Expected results:

• Comprehensive analysis framework and knowledge base with a tested set of indicators building on an inventory (~5000 entries of European CAIs active in the energy transition), surveys covering 6 countries, 30 comparative case-studies, 6 participatory case studies, 6 frontier case studies
• Web-based supporting platform for researchers and practitioners of SI/CAIs
• Six co-developed scenarios and roadmaps for CAIs
• Handbook with blueprints to start, sustain and scaleup CAIs in Europe
• Six participatory studies (e.g. on rural-urban relationship, relevance of social/gender issues)

Project partners

• University of Torino, Italy (Project Coordinator)
• Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation, Spain
• Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), Norway
• Bocconi University, Italy
• Joint Research Centre, Belgium
• Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Denmark
• Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Belgium
• European network for community-led initiatives on climate change and sustainability (ECOLISE), Belgium
• Tartu Regional Energy Agency (TREA), Estonia
• University of Groningen, Netherlands
• European Crowdfunding Network, Belgium
• Jagiellonian University, Poland