Asset

From a policy standpoint, the single most helpful measure would be to facilitate the allocation to renewable energy communities of publicly owned surfaces suitable for hosting generation plants — the roofs of schools, sports facilities, municipal buildings and other public assets — through streamlined and transparent procedures for granting their use. A second priority is for public institutions to promote renewable energy communities more actively, not merely as a technical instrument for generating electricity but as a tool for local development and for strengthening community participation, with information and awareness-raising initiatives aimed at citizens and businesses alike. Lastly, it would be valuable to entrust local authorities and territorial bodies with the possibility of directly managing part of the energy resources available in their area: keeping decisions, and the resulting benefits, as close as possible to the communities that host the installations.

Here too the main difficulty lies in involving the local population and building trust in the proposed initiative. In addition, farmers have received substantial subsidies in recent years for energy development and efficiency measures, so it is necessary to check that the regulatory requirements for joining an energy community are met and, above all, that a minimum return is available.

One goal for the end of the project is to see the energy community up and running, with its substation registered and enough members to generate enough shared energy to deliver a return (the incentive) to the local area.

For Asset the work starts further back, because the Renewable Energy Community has yet to be set up. A group of producers and consumers needs to be brought together around a project for the growth of the local area, and doing so requires data: a mapping of existing resources, an analysis of the parties to focus on and a study of the ways in which energy can actually be shared among them. To these is added a business plan confirming the initiative's sustainability.

The Asset initiative has no experience of energy sharing yet, but the area in which it operates does. In the past, with the involvement of the local bank Cassa Rurale, photovoltaic systems were installed on the roofs of the area's consumer cooperatives: an experience of renewable generation that has already tested cooperation between cooperative bodies and the local bank. The next step is to turn that generation into shared energy.

Asset was chosen because it represents a different case from the other two: a grassroots initiative that has nonetheless enjoyed the backing of institutional and cooperative players from the very start. This is the situation participants sum up in the phrase «a cooperation within the Cooperative movement», and it makes it possible to follow the birth of a Renewable Energy Community from its very first decisions.

Asset belongs to the cooperative world and learned of Agricom through the channels the Federazione Trentina della Cooperazione uses to inform its member organisations about available initiatives and opportunities. For Asset the project arrived at the most delicate stage, the one preceding the establishment of the Renewable Energy Community, when all the decisions are still open and external, expert support can help keep the focus on the objective.