"The project ""The power of community energy"" is a joint initiative of 4 partners - non-governmental organizations from Poland (SIE), Turkey (TROYA), Germany (WECF) and Denmark (INFORSE). Each partners works in the fields of non-formal and informal education on subjects important for sustainable development (including climate change, environmental protection, sustainable energy, energy transformation, civil society). The partnership will develop educational content that will complement the knowledge of educators / trainers passed to the target group - local communities of rural areas, small towns or urban districts.Numerous analyzes (official and partners' ones) indicate that there is a need to raise knowledge about social, civic and entrepreneurship competences, as well as knowledge related to climate protection and the environment, whose condition and quality affects human health and nature. The success of energy transformation depends on the level of citizenship competence. Energy transformation, including the establishment of energy cooperatives and citizen’s energy are a response to challenges facing the current civilization.The partners are very familiar of the needs in their countries in this regard. Each country is at a different stage of development of such projects: Denmark and Germany – countries with a high degree of social and civic competences - have been consistently building energy independence for years, including through community energy; in Poland and Turkey – countries with low degree of social and civic competences - examples of such undertakings are limited to a dozen. In every country - in the face of a changing situation – there is a need of knowledge and tools for associating local communities into cooperatives, financing local investments and creating cooperation networks not only at the local level. There is a great need for projects that will enable people to learn from other communities about stopping greenhouse gas emissions and thereby stop climate change.Milestones of the project are international meetings (4 in total, one in the country of each partner), whose aim is to exchange experiences, learn about the most efficient practices and work on the results.At the local level, each partner will conduct workshops in an open form using the project results in them. It is estimated that a minimum of 280 people will participate in them.The wide range of recipients will be achieved through websites, social media, networks and participation of partners in events related to the topic of the project and through the participation of partners and links to networks operating in similar areas.The implementation of the project is based on the principles and methods established by the partnership: systematic communication between partners, schedule, dissemination plan, monitoring, evaluation and joint problem solving by consensus.The results of the project will be:1. Newsletter (4 editions) prepared by the organizer of the international meeting (pdf) containing information about the meeting, photos, news2. Information on the project and its results on all partners' websites3. Guides (2) ""The organization of cooperation to create cooperatives, bottom-up initiatives as a response to the challenges of the 21st century"". ""Comparative analysis of energy cooperatives in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Turkey"".4. A database about best practice (online)5. A database of local institutions, organizations and groups related to the project's subject (online)6. Well-established international partnership cooperation7. Development of follow-up projects by the partnersThe results of the project will be included in the partners curricula (INFORSE-Europe training for members of the organization in local commuities , SIE workshops carried out in rural areas, TROYA workshops for emerging cooperatives, WECF educational work at the national and international level). They will be used in trainings and lectures and shared with individuals and organizations cooperating with partners.Experts, trainers and educators will take part in the project's activities, the latter will include in their educational offers the results (guidance, databases) developed during the project. Educational activities will have the character of ""lifelong learning"".The permanent effect of the project will be increasing the knowledge of the target group on topics related to civic competences in connection with civic energy, but also increasing the level of knowledge and skills of teams of partners' organizations and an extensive network of contacts and cooperation.All results in English and the partners' languages will be published on each partner's websites and on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform and available for free for interested parties."

Collective advisory assemblies (CAAs) are an innovative, flexible, impactful, ready-to-use tool applicable for addressing various forms and levels of energy poverty. CAAs take the form of sessions typically gathering 10 to 30 people and open to anyone who is experiencing difficulties in relation to the access and affordability of domestic energy services, e.g., unsuitable high energy bills, inadequate tariffs or supply contract, late payment or indebtedness with providers, or health issues related to energy poverty. CAAs stand out as a community tool in which a group of people with similar energy poverty conditions share concerns and grievances in a safe and trusted space and where practical solutions are co-created through collective intelligence. Unlike individualised approaches based on one-on-one interventions CAAs constitute a horizontal engagement methodology in which people affected by energy poverty act ‘experts by practice’ capable of providing advanced peer-to-peer advice and guidance. The support provided is non-invasive, helps affected people reclaim their dignity, and opens the door for new forms of ‘energy citizenship’ that allow the participation of traditionally excluded segments of consumers into energy decision-making. Over 300 CAAs have been organized across Europe since the methodology was initially devised in Barcelona (Spain) in 2014, and its viability has been further confirmed by the Horizon 2020 EmpowerMed project, which enabled its replication in France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Albania. The experience accumulated so far provides solid evidence on the positive impacts for vulnerable households in terms of cost savings, debt reduction, consumer empowerment and change of social imaginaries on energy poverty. Its scalability and replicability are ensured because CAAs are an inexpensive support, cost-efficient tool, have low-entry material and financial requirements, and allow a great degree of flexibility in their implementation.

FITTER-EU (FITTER) aims to contribute to existing research on the origins, dynamics and determinants of inequalities and enable anticipatory governance to support a fair and inclusive twin transition in Europe. The project innovates by the formulation and development of an ecosystem (FITTER ecosystem) that pivotally includes a highly interactive and gamified Digital Platform powered by an Intelligent Predictive Decision Support System. Through a co-creation methodological approach, this ecosystem will enable policymakers to predict which social groups may be at risk of being adversely affected by twin transition policies under different scenarios, with the option to simulate the implementation of these policies to assess inequalities and social exclusion risks. The Digital Platform within the ecosystem will provide proposed mitigation measures and better practice guides that can be used to curve potential negative effects of policies on identified at-risk groups. The FITTER ecosystem also incorporates wider platform connectivity capability and better practice guides which, through a foresight engagement process, will help to meet the needs of the engaging FITTER Cluster Community Group of Stakeholders (CCGS). The CCGS includes key pan-European members such as policymakers, civil society organisations including trade unions, as well as business angels among other targets.

In the Mediterranean countries, the coastal areas are facing several specific challenges when it comes to energy poverty, mainly connected with thermal comfort of dwellings. Buildings are scarcely isolated, often there are no heating systems in buildings, or those are highly inefficient, and the cooling component is more important than in other areas, calling for a diversity of energy services beyond heating. Women and women-led households are disproportionately affected by energy poverty, while women’s agency is highlighted in acting against energy poverty. Although there is some knowledge on the health impacts of energy poverty, involving health practitioners in the energy poverty action is rare. This is why the main objective of the project is to contribute to energy poverty abatement in the Mediterranean through a) implementing a set of practical energy efficiency and RES measures, tailored to empower households in energy poverty and specifically focused on women and health, b) assessing their efficiency and impacts to formulate policy recommendations and c) promoting policy solutions among key actors for stimulating action against energy poverty at local and EU level. The project will first build networks with local actors in pilot regions (WP1) and transfer knowledge and experience to build capacity of all involved actors for implementing practical measures (WP2). The core of the project is implementation of practical measures to tackle energy poverty, such as community approaches, household visits, do-it-yourself approaches, support for small investments and health workshops (WP3). The impacts and success of the implemented measures will be assessed and analysed (WP4) to support formulation of policy recommendations, which will be advocated among key actors to stimulate and support policies against energy poverty (WP5). Project results and outcomes will be disseminated among the target groups to ensure a wide reach out at local, national and EU level.

Women hold great potential as agents of change, driving the clean energy transition and getting us closer to meeting the EU’s climate and energy targets for 2030. W4RES taps into this potential to support the uptake of renewable energy in heating and cooling (RHC), a market that urgently needs to shift more to RES. We start with a deep dive into framework conditions and regional specificities of 8 diverse yet representative markets in Europe, assessing enablers and barriers to RHC uptake. Building on gender-disaggregated insights from market actors and stakeholders as well as successful cases of women leading RHC projects, we develop a suite of flexible and cost-effective support measures with high reapplication potential. We then deploy our measures on the field offering technical and business support to cut down project development timings and efforts as well as to sidestep legal, institutional and financial challenges, setting in motion feasible and sustainable business models fit to market. In parallel, we empower decision-makers to leverage a gender perspective into their projects and policies to improve acceptance, while raising awareness to foster demand for RHC. Along the way, a gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation framework will gauge the performance and impact of our measures, providing us with the intel required to turn them from solutions fit for a set of local challenges to integrated solutions that can address diverse policy and market needs across Europe. We use this intel as a catalyst to foster co-creation, mutual learning and international cooperation for frameworks more conducive to RHC uptake at local, regional national and EU level, based on cost-effective support schemes and lower financing costs for RHC facilities. In the process, we coordinate our actions with relevant initiatives and offer tools to facilitate the reapplication of our results, ensuring their long-term sustainability as viable solutions to supporting RHC uptake.