EKIOLA: Energy community Citizens involvement
About this good practice
Objective: to build PV power plants to fulfil cooperative members´consumption and to allow citizenship to participate in the generation and management.
Resources needed
- The minimum required participants to develop an EC is 400 citizens. However, is not always easy to involve so many citizens.
- Info points in each municipality.
- Each MW requires approximately 1 hectare of land.
- Aid has been requested to finance the projects (state, Basque Government, etc.).
Evidence of success
Main results of the good pratice are to produce sustainable energy, in a cooperative way where citizens are the owners of the project. Another result is to put consumers at the heart of the energy transition by converting them into Prosumers.
EKIOLA demonstrated its potential for replication when it create Azpeitia´s EKIOLA, where 570 citizens signed-up in it.
There are 15 cooperatives established and 2 installations with grid injection. And in all of them they are working on socialization
Potential for learning or transfer
- A huge challenge is to select the appropiate site for the PV plant because of the high density region. It covers an area of 7,234 sq.km and a population of 2,2M inhabitants.
- Another challenge is the social acceptance of PV plants. But, EKIOLA´s advantage is that citizens are part of the project (non-profit entity) so they take advantage of it.
- The acceptance of smaill PV plants is better.
- For financing, agreements have been reached with different financial entities so that members can request loans, with advantageous conditions.
- Importance of the social aspect: Socialization requires experts in social matters.
- The involvement of local entities (so that the inhabitants consider the project close)
Ways to promote citizen involvement:
• Agreement between EKIOLA and the municipality interested in developing a local EC.
• Create info points in each municipality and training technicians.
• Support the EC in getting the funding and/or subsidies required for the implementation.
