Our solutions around Europe
Spotlight on REScoops fighting Energy Poverty around Europe.
TupperWatt
A collaborative way to explore energy efficiency
Enercoop, the french energy cooperative, has a fun way to engage members and citizens to talk about energy efficiency: Tupperwatt. The idea is to encourage members of the cooperative to organise at their home a meeting with their neigbours to talk about Energy Efficiency. The team of Enercoop is ready to support and engage the citizens during those meetings. They provide them with tools and technics (like Dr. Watt or the Wiki Energy) to save energy and understand their invoice better. This project was deploy all over France.
FJR Ordning
A collective way to save on heat cost in Denmark
The cooperative Hvidovre Fjernwarme pays for an energy engineer to visit and assess the heating system of the cooperative members. This expert is delivering a list of recommended actions to the household. The cooperative then supports the members to invest in renovating their system in order to reach efficiency. The savings realised are benefitting the entire community because of the reduction of the price paid by the cooperative to the TSO.
Energy Solidaire
An innovative way to finance Energy Solidarity in France
Energy Solidaire is a project born of Les Amis d'Enercoop, a french association linked with the cooperative Enercoop. It is solidarity fund that raises money through micro-donations from energy bills of consumers and produced energy donated by renewables producers to support local social initiatives tackling fuel poverty. Bringing social and energy organisations together, Energie Solidaire will fund projects with long term effect on energy poverty, and meeting environmental and social goals.
The Solar House
A multi tenant social housing production project in Danmark
In a multi-story building of 3,700 households located in an underprivileged area of Copenhagen, together the tenants decided to produce electricity from solar PV and water heating from solar thermal. The project, now known simply as ‘the Solar House’, is owned by the housing estate, and the tenants contribute financially to the project through additions on top of their monthly rent or mortgage payments (20 cents / m2 ). The electricity produced contributes towards self-sufficiency within the estate, but each dwelling has its own part of the system, which is operated through a common grid. The project is being implemented in cooperation with the local cooperative district heating.
Repowering Brixton
Brixton Solar, to support low income households to get out expensive deals in England.
In Brixton, many people cannot afford to have contracts with energy companies and instead are on more expensive ‘pay-as-you go’ tariffs. ‘Brixton Solar’ community power project allows tenants in social housing to make smaller investments in the projects, and gives them a limited amount of the electricity produced with solar panels on their own roofs for free. Part of the revenues from the project go into a dedicated energy efficiency fund that allows people to take part in ‘draught buster’ workshops to help them cut energy waste and save further on their energy bills. The cooperative also provides training opportunities for youth living in the local community through an internship programme.
Good Energy in Social Entrepreneurship
ZEZ fights youth unemployment as well as energy poverty in Croatia
The project is carried out by ZEZ - the Croatia energy cooperative. It looks to improve energy efficiency in energy poor households through use of tips and energy efficiency measures, carried out by young and long-term unemployed persons qualified as energy efficiency advisors.
Over a few months, the team of the cooperative will train 30 young people from 3 Croatian towns and teach them:
(1) how to identify where energy is consumed and make a basic energy audit
(2) how to recognize households’ energy and money savings
(3) how to use an online application to calculate these savings
(4) how to analyze consumption data and suggest the best measures for water and energy efficiency
(5) basic concepts of entrepreneurship and how to start a business
De Wijkwerf
Energy Efficiency and Solidarity
The Belgian cooperative, Energent, is supporting its members to initiate energy efficiency measure in their household. Partnering with associations and the municipality, the cooperative supports low-income households to measure their energy consumption and to get subsidies to perform energy refurbishements or to engage their landlors to do it. Energent is running a one-stop-shop to deliver free information and simplify procedures.
