Achievements

Year 1

The first year of COBEN focussed on systemizing its strategic approach and on consolidating selected community energy consortiums that act as hosts to the project's pilot initiatives.

Year 2

COBEN’s second year witnessed not only the completion of the planning phases of all regional initiatives but also three strateagic milestones: the design of a civic energy process to replace the old energy model, the specification of the benefits of civic energy and inroads into civic energy business models designed to drive the pilot projects. These were the focus of numerous regional stakeholder events. The COBEN process approach to mainstreaming civic energy was featured in this year’s European consultations run by EESC, DG Energy and CoR on shaping the EU’s future energy market.

Year 3

In year three the project's consistent methodology is paying off. The process approach to promoting civic energy within a closely-knit transnational consortium has resulted in substantial progress in meeting the project's declared objectives of communicating the benefits of civic energy and enabling the pilot communities to mobilize local energy value chains in 14 NSR municipalities. Following the development work of previous periods and the ongoing cooperation within the project's expanded networks the interaction with policy makers in the new area of civic energy legislation at European, national and regional levels has intensified. The range of civic energy business models developed and tested in six NSR national frameworks has attracted growing attention; they show how civic energy works and how it can be organized.

Promotional highlights include the transnational Civic Energy Conference in September 2019, which successfully put civic energy and the role of the NSR in piloting community-driven energy transitions onto the European map. The Conference followed a well-attended Norwegian conference on smart climate solutions in June, a Parliamentary Evening in Hannover in May, COBEN workshop contributions to the North Sea Conference 2019 and the European Sustainable Energy Week 2019.

Implementation work continues in all COBEN locations: the number of pilot projects has been increased and the rewards are becoming increasingly visible, including e.g. the installation of two community solar parks in Emmen and bioenergy investments by the farming community of Østfold that have replaced 1.272.829 kWh of fossil energy by renewable energy solutions within the project period, thereby reducing CO₂ emissions by 316 tons.

The project continues to combine social innovation with regional development in the critical field of energy systems. Although the EU objective of establishing a level playing field between community-led energy and centralized energy systems is still a vision for the future, the development of transferrable civic energy blueprints makes this vision attainable. COBEN is currently projecting an extension of its geographical outreach to include a large Swedish municipality and new forms of public-private partnerships to master the energy transition challenge.

COBEN Extension

The COBEN project, originally due to end in 2019, has now been granted an extension until September 2022. New focus areas include the market uptake of civic energy and measures to mainstream the civic energy process. The partnership will be joined by VEOLIA Benelux and Uppsala Municipality ensuring that COBEN is now represented in all North Sea countries.

Year 4

In year four, COBEN had to overcome new challenges in time of isolation and social distance. Unnecessary to say that these unprecedented times raised challenges in the management and execution of the COBEN project. Nonetheless, through ingenuity and creative adaptation, COBEN continues to succeed and is now represented in the entire North Sea Region, with two new partners having joined out team: Uppsala municipality in Sweden and Veolia NV-SA. New focus areas include the market uptake of civic energy, digitalization, policy innovation, and measures to mainstream the civic energy process. In this project period, a focus has been on expanding the project region, spreading the project results and methodologies to a larger area, and developing a closer cooperation between neighbouring regions.

But the successes of the first phase in the COBEN-Extension does not end there:

Locally Generated Emmen has been established as a support structure for local energy communities, through which the expertise and manpower needed to get civic energy projects off the ground is organized. The Emmen partner project is focused on generating community benefits from large scale solar parks in Emmen. The Hochschule Osnabrück has started to answer the question: “What are the success factors for citizen energy communities?“ From this qualitative research, first findings about success factors for citizen energy cooperatives could be derived. Ringkøbing-Skjern Kommune consolidated the pilot project “Citizen Driven Transport System – Electric Vestrum” – and is taking the first steps towards the partner specific objectives: extending the municipality’s sector-coupling policy to deploy surplus renewable energy capacity to benefit community development, building-up sustainable rural community energy consortiums with a particular focus on e-mobility solutions and social cohesion as change agents of green transitions, and building on the experience of the “Citizen Driven Transport System – Electric Vestrum” to explore the potential of micro e-mobility. The Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen has made The Heat Transition vision of Eeklo available to inspire other communities and cities. They also selected four new pilots in which they support the realization of civic energy.

Implementation work continues in all COBEN locations: the number of pilot projects has been increased with new pilots representing different stages of the Civic Energy Cycle.

Year 5

Year five of COBEN kept under the motto: ‘adapting civic energy to a new reality’: Since the pandemic has shifted many parts of life to the virtual realm, the focus in 2021 has been on COBEN's concept development for a digital tool, the "Civic Energy Informer". It will follow, and provide information and useful material through the phases of the Civic Energy Cycle. It contains information of the different work packages, e.g. risk management strategies, the risk matrix, information on market aggregation strategies, etc. An important highlight during this year was the “real life” project meeting in Eeklo and Knokke-Heist in September. The COBEN team celebrated together with the Flemish Minister of Energy, Zuhal Demir (N-VA), a milestone event: the official inauguration of the first heat cluster in Eeklo.

The COBEN partner Veolia nv-sa is developing together with the citizen cooperative for renewable energy Ecopower and the city of Eeklo a sustainable grid that heats the city.

6 years of COBEN

COBEN has been a forerunner in advancing the green transition through delivering the community benefits of civic energy.

Its success can be contributed to the innovative solutions developed in all partner regions:

The University of Oldenburg has established and coordinated the promotion of a highly committed and cooperative working partnership that collaboratively mastered three strategic elements:

The civic energy process methodology (Civic Energy Cycle)
The elaboration of community benefits of civic energy
The civic energy business model development

Uppsala municipality has provided a matchmaking platform for energy communities. The platform has given support and investigated civic energy projects and potential energy communities in Uppsala to welcome smaller players to the energy market. The project has impact local authorities and public procures to make it easier for energy communities to play a role in the region.

COBEN has helped establish capacity and knowledge about renewable energy solutions in the Viken farming community. The established agricultural educational facility and a wide range of courses and events, have given farmers and other actors the knowledge and experience needed to invest in renewable energy solutions. COBEN has also influenced a substantial number of local and regional policies and SECAPs, both within Viken and in other parts of Norway.

The Province of East Flanders (POVL) tested through several wind park and district heat network pilots a new approach on civic entrepreneurship. The insights from the pilots are translated into regional energy and spatial policy instruments and gained resonance in other communities. The provincial council of POVL adopted a policy framework on civic participation in green energy projects.

Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality has achieved impressive results for the benefit of the citizens and the climate, e.g. through more than 1000 energy checks in private homes and holiday homes, common energy plants in villages, citizen-driven electric car sharing structures, and the display of energy and heat data, wind and energy exhibition.

In COBEN, Locally Generated Emmen has been established as a support structure for local energy communities. The Emmen partner project is focused on generating community benefits from large scale solar parks in Emmen. A spatial policy instrument was developed to claim fiscal project space for cooperative solar parks. Due to COBEN, Emmen is now a forerunner in the Netherlands in the area of civic energy policy. The policy instruments developed in the project function as an example for implementing the principle of local ownership.

One important result of the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück is the release of the online-tool “PINA – Planungstool Industrielle Abwärme” for detecting industrial waste heat and matching this information with heat sources in the surrounding areas. The tool is mapping geodata in combination with statistical data about heat demand and individual data from industrial companies in the County of Osnabrück.

Together with key stakeholders, the Energy Savings Trust Scotland developed four community-led local energy plans as a model for development of civic energy, as well as a guide and on-line toolkit to developing community-led Local Energy Plans to support replication and future uptake.

As a final product, COBEN has put all its gained knowledge and experiences over the past few years into the development of an applicable support tool, the ‘Civic Energy Informer’, which is going to ensure that the COBEN results are accessible for future adopters after the project’s lifetime.