Last week, Xavier Simón, coordinator of EC4RURAL, participated in two relevant sectoral forums to promote the project and the work being carried out in Galicia and Estonia to create 34 rural energy communities.
On Wednesday 13th and Thursday 14th March, Simón, together with Reigo Lehtla from the Association of Estonian Cities and Municipalities (AECM), participated in an event organised by the European Executive Agency for Climate, Environment, and Infrastructure (CINEA) in Brussels to publicise all the projects approved in the 2021-2022 calls within the LIFE-CET Energy Communities call. It was an opportunity to reinforce the role of renewable energy, but also to create synergies between similar projects and, above all, with the people who implement them.
Xavier Simón explained: “In this CINEA call, we are sharing two days of work with different European groups: universities, NGOs, research institutes, municipalities, public authorities… that are working to transform the energy system in two inseparable directions: the use of renewable sources at local level under the control of local democratic entities. EC4RURAL is one of them. It was encouraging to see that others are more advanced, but also challenging because of the existing barriers”.
During the presentation of each of the 20 participating projects from Spain, France, Ireland, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, Greece and Croatia, each project leader was able to explain the progress or results achieved. In the case of EC4RURAL, “they highlighted our ambition and recommended that we create a single regional entity to cover the management of all local facilities during the 25 years of the project”. With this figure, Simón continues, “we would be able to take advantage of all the benefits of this type of transformative collective initiative in the field of energy systems”.
Congress in Euskadi
The day after returning from Brussels, Xavier Simón travelled to the Basque Country to participate as a speaker in the 1st Conference on Energy Communities and the Social Economy, organised by the Network of Energy Communities in collaboration with Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council. Under the title “From the green energy transition to the just energy transition: the case of Galicia”, he presented the experience of EC4RURAL to more than a hundred experts and leaders of the sector.
Throughout the morning of Saturday 16th March, through various interventions and panels, we explored how energy communities are transforming the energy and economic landscape towards a more just and sustainable model.
