Proposals should address only one of the two scopes detailed below. The specific scope should be clearly mentioned in the proposal.

Scope A: Support to “second level communities”

This scope focuses on “second level communities” which are coalitions that represent, aggregate and serve multiple energy communities within a city, region or country.

Proposals may target the emergence of new second level communities AND/OR the consolidation and professionalisation of existing second level communities. The justification for creating new structures must be grounded in a thorough analysis of their national and regional context and their added value should be clearly explained.

Proposals should clearly describe governance structures, decision making processes and how member communities participate and exercise democratic control.

Proposals should define clear objectives for the second level communities to be created or reinforced. In particular, they should specify what they intend to achieve in the following areas:

• mutualising services for member communities (e.g. legal, technical, financial, communication),
• supporting the development and implementation of new energy community projects, and
• the long-term role they aim to play in their ecosystem (e.g. “one stop shop”, back-office service provider for energy communities, knowledge hub, etc.).

Proposals should:

• Design a service portfolio responding to the needs of current and prospective member communities. The services selected must be clearly justified and proposals should demonstrate that there is demand for them.
• Define target numbers and types of communities to be supported by the planned activities.
• If proposals foresee structured capacity building activities for member and prospective communities, these must be clearly explained and build on existing materials.
• Where relevant, proposals may describe approaches to make energy communities more inclusive.
• Where relevant, applicants may describe how they will facilitate collaboration in financing, for example by pooling project pipelines, coordinating joint applications to funding programmes, supporting access to finance, or developing shared investment vehicles and standardised contracts.
• Where relevant, proposals may explain how they will help initiate and incubate new energy communities in areas without existing initiatives and strengthen existing communities through training, coaching and peer learning.

Proposals should also present a financially viable economic model, including an assessment of operating costs and expected revenue for the second level communities targeted to continue beyond the project duration and explain how services and outputs will be designed for scalability and replication.

Scope B: Support for energy communities to implement projects in emerging areas

Proposals should focus on facilitating the implementation of energy projects led by energy communities in at least one of the following focus areas:

• Renewable heating and cooling[2]
• Energy efficiency measures in buildings
• Provision of flexibility services (demand response, community energy storage, smart charging, participation in dynamic tariffs, aggregation of member assets, and intra‑ or inter‑community peer‑to‑peer trading)
• Electromobility services supporting the integration of renewable energy sources

The objectives of the assistance to communities provided by the project must be concrete, measurable and clearly linked to the implementation of the above-listed solutions.

Proposals should clearly identify specific energy community projects that peer-to-peer activities can support. The planned support should include peer-to-peer exchanges and, where relevant, other targeted assistance to facilitate concrete implementation. Where the support from external experts is foreseen, their role should be to support and complement peer learning, not substitute it.

Capacity building activities may focus on communities but can also include other relevant local actors (municipal officials, housing providers, DSOs, installers).

The roles of participating communities should be clearly defined. Established energy communities with experience in the proposed area(s) of intervention and energy communities willing to start developing a project or activity in those areas should be either directly involved in the consortium or their concrete commitment and involvement in the project should be clearly demonstrated in the proposal. Cross-country or cross-region peer-to-peer learning is encouraged if it can clearly add value.

Approaches that aim to promote inclusion and energy poverty alleviation are encouraged.

Proposals should demonstrate how their proposed activities are embedded in and coherent with relevant local and national strategies (e.g. local heating and cooling plans).

For both scopes A and B:

• Projects should focus on supporting renewable energy communities (RECs) according to the amending Renewable Energy Directive and/or citizen energy communities (CECs) according to the EU Electricity Market Design Directive.
• Proposals should make use of already existing framework analyses (e.g. for the legal frameworks already made available by the European Energy Communities Facility and the Citizen Energy Advisory Hub) and not foresee additional ones unless their added value is clearly explained.
• Proposals should not develop any new tools, databases, or digital platforms unless their added value compared to existing ones is clearly justified and their potential scale-up beyond the project convincingly addressed.
• Consortia applying should demonstrate the support from stakeholders necessary to ensure the success of the project and a convincing strategy to engage other strategic stakeholders such as municipalities, regions, financial institutions, housing providers, NGOs and social services. Where relevant, actions to facilitate the collaboration with Distribution System Operators and other market participants such as commercial suppliers or aggregators can also be planned.

Proposals must be submitted by at least 3 applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities) from 3 different eligible countries.