Replicating social energy business models: feedback on POWER UP experiences

This report presents the replication strategies and activities performed in the six target countries of POWER UP: Italy, Belgium, Czechia, Spain, the Netherlands and North Macedonia. In POWER UP, two replication strategies have been deployed and tested: -a sister organisation scheme and -a series of national capacity building workshops. 

The sister organisation scheme ran throughout the project duration. It aimed at facilitating a privileged and regular exchange between national pilot project partners and external organisations showing high interest in the project, and holding a replication potential. The sister organisations have been identified and matched with consortium partners at the project inception phase. The POWER UP replication strategy and activities have demonstrated the strong potential of locally rooted, socially oriented renewable energy models to inspire and mobilise actors. 

Despite political changes, regulatory uncertainties, and differing starting points in each country, the replication strategy, which combined sister organisations and capacity-building activities, was effective in disseminating the project’s learnings, transferring knowledge, and potentially catalysing replication. Each one of the project target countries found its way in establishing cooperations that were meaningful for their local reality. 

But let’s not forget: Replication is not a one-size-fits-all process, and POWER UP showed the need for flexibility in the process.