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Environmental Policy Research Centre at Freie Universität Berlin Coordinates a European Research Network on Community Energy Funded by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020

The Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU) at Freie Universität has won funding to coordinate an international network to facilitate citizen participation in the energy supply. The focus is on community energy projects and renewable energy communities. The project is being funded with almost three million euros from the European Union as part of the framework program for research and innovation, Horizon 2020. Of this amount, almost 590,000 euros are going to FFU. In addition to FFU, 15 partner organizations are involved. They include research institutions, think tanks, agencies, and associations, as well as small and medium-sized companies.

News from Oct 30, 2020

Researchers in the COME RES project – the abbreviation stands for Community Energy for the uptake of renewables in the electricity sector. Connecting long-term visions with short-term actions – will investigate potentials, drivers, barriers, legal framework conditions, business and financing models, and transfer conditions in connection with community energy projects and renewable energy communities. They will also analyze positive examples.

In addition to FFU, the other project partners in COME RES are:

  • Asociación Canaria de Energías Renovables (ACER), Spain
  • Becker, Büttner & Held (bbh), Germany
  • Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), Norway
  • Ecoazioni, Italy
  • ECORYS españa, Spain
  • Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), The Netherlands
  • Agenzia nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l'energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile (ENEA), Italy
  • Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Belgium
  • ICLEI European Secretariat (ICLEI), Germany
  • Institute of Physical Energetics (IPE), Latvia
  • Instituto de Ciência e Inovação em Engenharia Mecânica e Engenharia Industrial (INEGI), Portugal
  • Latvian Environmental Investment Fund (LEIF), Latvia
  • Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE), Norway
  • Polish National Energy Conservation Agency (KAPE), Poland
  • REScoop.eu, Belgium

The FFU coordinator Dr. Maria Rosaria Di Nucci emphasized, “COME RES follows up on the Horizon 2020 project WinWind for the acceptance of wind energy, which we concluded in the spring of 2020.” Michael Krug, also a coordinator at FFU, stressed, “This enables us to gain additional knowledge from the WinWind project and broaden its perspective.” In addition to wind energy, the researchers will investigate other energy technologies such as photovoltaics and storage solutions and, in particular, integrated approaches such as microgrids or virtual power plants.

Dr. Di Nucci and Dr. Krug pointed out that the subject is highly topical: With the revised Renewable Energy Directive, the rights and obligations of renewable energy communities were regulated for the first time in 2018. All the EU member states are obliged to develop a corresponding regulatory framework by June 2021. The project partners are accompanying the implementation of the new EU legal framework in the partner countries. They support national, regional, and local authorities in regulatory issues and in expanding capacities. They are also planning to compare the implementation and application of the new EU legal framework in the various countries.

Further Information

Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU) at Freie Universität Berlin, COME RES Project

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