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Sun4All - Eurosolar for all: energy communities for a fair energy transition in Europe

International project

Sun4All aims at ensuring that vulnerable households have access to renewable energies is equitable, helps to cover energy needs, and can support multiple policy goals, such as affordable energy, job creation, and improved public health. Although the need is great, many households may not be able to afford RES installations or may be inhibited from participating in the energy transition for other reasons such as lack of access to information, difficulties to access finance or ownership patterns. EuroSolar for All (Sun4All) sets up a financial support scheme for renewable energy access for energy poor households.

The programme offers vulnerable consumers the opportunity to subscribe to community solar. The general scheme is based on the existing New York’s initiative named “Solar for All” and will be adapted and implemented in 4 cities and regions in Europe: Barcelona (ES), Communauté de Communes Coeur de Savoie (FR), Rome (IT) and Almada (PT). The overall idea is to offer solar shares to vulnerable consumers instead of a traditional social subsidy (p.e to pay utility bill arrears). The beneficiaries of the programme will be co-owners of a local PV plant and the revenues produced through the generation and selling of the energy will be used to reduce energy bills.

Besides, ES4All presents other multiple co benefits:

  • Beneficiaries save money through a free community solar subscription
  • Access is ensured whether participants are renters or homeowners ensuring their participation into the energy transition and leaving no one behind. -Eurosolar for All facilitates behaviour change and provides tailored advice to beneficiaries.
  • The programme optimizes social subsidies by transforming them into a profitable investment for the beneficiaries After testing and evaluating the model in these 4 cities and regions, replication and up-scaling of the programme is foreseen in at least 10 other EU cities and planned in other cities and regions to become an established programme in EU.

With a budget of over 1 million € the project develops the following activities:

PHASE 1 (WP2) - Adaptation of Solar for All to the European and local context:. This phase sets the theoretical and methodological common approach, as well as the technical and practical issues related to pilot cities. The NY Solar for All model will be adapted to the EU including further activities linked to the PV generation and energy bill savings, specifically for four pilot cities: Barcelona, Almada, Roma and Communes du Coeur de Savoie. During this phase a Community of Practice (CoP) Observer’s Group will provide 10 other cities, regions and utilities interested in implementing the Sun4All.

PHASE 2 (WP3) - End-users’ identification and engagement will set the criteria to access Sun4all programme and to identify and engage the participants in the pilots in Barcelona, Communes du Coeur de Savoie, Roma and Almada. It includes the definition of criteria of potential beneficiaries; the selection of direct beneficiaries, as well as the engagement process and the definition with them of community actions, addressed to achieve a behavioural change, along with the savings.

PHASE 3 (WP4) - Testing Sun4All: After designing the business model and the engagement and behavioural change activities, the Sun4All will be tested two times (12-month each) in the four cities/regions reaching 1.200 direct beneficiaries.

PHASE 4 (WP4) – Impact Assessment: this phase will be built on the previous phases’ data, in order to evaluate the project impacts according to EC2 H2020 programme of the European Union call but also along other multiple dimensions.

PHASE 5 (WP5) - Transferability, upscaling and policy orientation: will address sustainability and scalability.

Following the implementation of Sun4All in the pilot cities parallel activities to support the upscaling and transferability of the programme will be developed. Pilot cities will be trained to align the project actions to where the program would be added in their SECAPs Actions Plans in order to make it stable beyond H2020 programme of the European Union.

Besides, the 10 members (cities and utilities) of the Community of Practice Observer’s Group will work on their adoption roadmaps with the help of the project partners and guidance of ICLEI EURO. Furthermore, the project will plan the scalability of the programme at an EU level beyond H2020 programme of the European Union. In addition to upscaling, this phase will take a step back to integrate the lessons from Sun4All into the broader policy picture of energy poverty alleviation, consumer engagement, social innovation and the European Green Deal. Building on the project’s results and discussions with implementers and policy-makers, policy recommendations will be formulated to show how best the Sun4All scheme could contribute to the fight against energy poverty at European, national, regional and local levels of governance. These recommendations will be disseminated in the framework of more general advocacy to ensure that energy poverty is on the agenda of decision-makers and to ensure a fair energy transition in Europe.

Main beneficiaries: the energy poor, low income consumers and policymakers





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