INCLUSIVE Renewable Energy Communities

Renewable energy communities (RECs) are the European flagship answer to the dual crisis of climate change and energy poverty. Directive RED II made them legal across the EU. In Italy, legislative decree 199/2021 turned them into national law. By 2026, hundreds of RECs are operating across the continent, with thousands more in the pipeline.

And yet, on the ground, a troubling trend is emerging. The families joining RECs tend to be the ones who already own their home, already have a stable bill, already have a bank willing to finance a photovoltaic system. In contrast, the elderly widow in a class G apartment, the single mother in social housing, the migrant family in substandard accommodation: these are precisely the people RECs were supposed to help, and they're being left out. This exclusion is particularly alarming considering that the European Commission's Energy Poverty Advisory Hub estimates that 35 to 50 million Europeans struggle to keep their homes warm. Consequently, the Clean Energy for All Europeans 2030 targets will remain out of reach if RECs continue to recruit only the socio-economically secure. The gap between policy ambition and on-the-ground delivery is widening, and cities, not states, are where it must be closed through actionable, inclusive governance. What is missing is thus a structural focus on guaranteeing access for fragile and vulnerable populations. 

To close this gap, European cities need a standardized methodology to define clear socio-economic indicators for vulnerability. 

Once identified, a dedicated playbook is required to systematically review and update REC frameworks across three core areas:

• 1) Simplifying entry procedures to remove administrative and financial barriers for vulnerable residents.

• 2) Formulating dedicated incentive structures within the surplus redistribution rules to directly alleviate energy poverty.

• 3) Overhauling the governance of the 10% environmental and social project fund.

•  

Rather than relying on traditional top-down assembly votes, this project will design an inclusive decision-making architecture. By introducing participatory budgeting tools, citizen juries, and robust scoring grids, cities can ensure absolute transparency, impartiality, and genuine community co-ownership when selecting the local projects and open calls funded by these reserves.

General Objective:

To design and validate a transferable governance framework that enables European cities to build inclusive renewable energy communities, ensuring that vulnerable households are at the centre of CER design rather than at its margins. The network does not deploy energy communities (URBACT funds soft actions only); it designs what national and European funding instruments will deploy after the network ends.

Specific Objectives:

SO1 ENGAGEMENT: To design and stress-test a recruitment system, combining an institutional antenna network (social housing agencies, health services, foundations, business associations) to be trained in a later stage, and a community-level layer (energy ambassadors trained inside vulnerable groups), that brings vulnerable households into renewable energy communities.

SO2 GOVERNANCE: To design statutory and institutional architecture for renewable energy communities that resists captures and embeds inclusion structurally and a permanent steering committee providing input for the redistribution of the CER surplus inside the municipal organigram.

SO3 PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING: To design participatory mechanisms for the redistribution of CER surplus revenue, covering proposal stage, deliberative decision-making, and the bridge between citizen jury and statutory assembly of REC members.