PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
In small islands, Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) as defined in Directive (EU) 2018/2001 can accelerate the decarbonisation process, because they allow overcoming some technical and non-technical barriers typical of islands. ISLET project involve three pilot islands in Greece, Italy and Croatia in designing a model applicable in small islands, to support local authorities to cooperate with citizen-led initiatives. Then the project will: • Enhance the municipalities’ capacity to create a favourable environment for RECs, thanks to new forms of collective ownership of energy projects; • Increase the cooperation between local/regional authorities and citizens that want to create RECs by improving public participation and engagement in citizen-led initiatives and supporting local policy frameworks; • Fine-tune a common path for building RECs in small islands and testing it in other Islands; • Improve the information of RECs, related national and EU laws and funding opportunities among local authorities’ representatives in small island at EU level; • Define an efficient business plan tailored on Mediterranean small islands to improve the access to funds to finance RECs; • Empower local actors to collectively address energy transition targets through use of public resources, funds and capacity and enhancing technical and management local skills; • Evaluate the contribution of citizens-led initiatives in islands decarbonisation; • Create a European network of peer-to-peer support for Islands municipalities in provide support to their citizens for building RECs. Thanks to a consortium expert both in islands decarbonisation and in community-led energy initiatives, the project will implement three pilot renewable energy communities and aim at replicating this experience in many other Mediterranean islands, providing to the municipalities, citizens, companies and local and regional stakeholders the tools and support for energy communities implementation.