SEC-Tools: Sustainable Energy Communities – Tools

Communities in New EU Member States and Accession Countries are faced with a big need for energy efficiency improvements and further utilisation of renewable energy.

The SEC Tools action entailed a systematic approach to meet this challenge in form of

• Refining and elaborating generic tools for communities in NMS
• Undertaking pilot actions in selected communities defined in relation to the process of developing sustainable energy communities
• Targeted dissemination to communities in all NMS

The key target group were small and medium-sized communities of 3,000-40,000 inhabitants. Such communities are in NMS most often characterised by limited capacity to develop sustainable energy communities and social and financial related problems are relatively bigger than in larger communities.

A core part of the action concerned elaboration of generic tools, a ‘Toolbox’ with a view to encourage qualified sustainable energy thinking and practice.

Pilot projects, including testing of tools used within the pilot actions, were tested in nine communities in respectively Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic and Bulgaria on the three axis of SEC practice: energy planning, activation of the energy market and mobilisation of end-users.

Further the action included a broad set of dissemination activities to help ensure the spread of the developed tools and lessons learnt in the targeted regions and at broader scale.

More information and results of the project are available at www.sec-tools.net