As part of a consortium of 6 organizations, Ecoaction will work on the international SHARES+ project aimed at supporting the development of energy communities. The project’s goal is to launch at least 13 new energy communities in four participating countries — Ukraine, Romania, North Macedonia, and Cyprus — as well as to support existing ones in these countries and partner countries (Austria and Bulgaria). Expert support will also be provided by civil society organizations from Austria and Bulgaria, which already have experience in similar projects, with funding provided by the European Union.
Energy communities are local initiatives that enable citizens, businesses, and communities to produce and use energy from renewable sources for their own needs. They can be established by residents, small business representatives, or local self-government bodies, or created in partnership among them.
The work will include identifying country-specific regulatory, socioeconomic and technical barriers for the establishment and scale up of citizens-led projects and advocationg for implementations of solutions to overcome those issues. Subsequently, participating organizations will deliver localized technical support, tailored resources, expert-guided analysis, legal Q&A catalogues and financial databases, and communication templates to promote collective actions.
In Ukraine, the concept of energy communities is still not defined at the legislative level, and accordingly, there are no sufficient legal tools for their creation. Therefore, Ecoaction’s primary task within this project is to promote the implementation of an appropriate legislative framework that will provide accessible mechanisms for creating energy communities and sufficient technical capabilities for their connection to the grid.
The development of energy communities will enable citizens to become energy producers both for their own needs, which in turn will help save money. At the same time, scaling energy communities will also contribute to environmental safety, energy resilience, and energy independence of the country, reducing dependence on fossil fuels in the energy sector.
This project builds on the successful experience of the previous SHARES project, under which, from 2021 to 2024, participating organizations managed to create 38 energy communities in 6 European countries. Thus, the goal of the new SHARES+ project is to expand this experience to other countries, including Ukraine.
You can follow the project’s progress on Ecoaction’s LinkedIn page, as well as on the project’s pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in English.
The project is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the speaker(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
