Energy Communities: a Workshop to learn what they are and understand how they work

The Context

Climate change has highlighted the need to quickly implement an energy transition that is fair, reduces poverty and is a source of social and economic well-being.

Why Energy Communities?

In recent years, Energy Communities have gained strong support from the EU and national governments as a collective and decentralized form of energy production and consumption. They are promoted as a way to better engage citizens in the clean energy transition, reduce the cost of energy, tackle energy poverty and improve the resilience of energy systems. 

They are an extraordinary tool to break out of old patterns and false oppositions, which are based on simplistic polarizations of reality.

Why an Energy Communities Workshop?

Energy communities and other citizen-led energy actions are still a niche in our energy markets. It is therefore necessary to get closer to citizens and explain in a simple way what they are and what benefits they can bring, both to the environment, to work and to the territory.

The Laboratory aims to illustrate the functioning of Energy Communities in an interactive way: starting from reading the bill, it will be explained how the energy world works and some concrete cases will be presented and simulated.

The Workshop aims in particular to provide elements and operational cues for planning common initiatives together.

Why Energy with Books in the Neighbourhood?

It is necessary to find a way to meet and bring together different people to make tangible how citizens can evaluate and decide to act together and thus have a concrete impact on reality.

Books are the primary source of human energy so that together we can seize the opportunities that arise at times of great change, and bookshops are a point of contact and presence on the ground.

Energy is today a heartfelt topic that has a strong impact on the everyday life of each of us and is no longer an abstract and distant theme.

How can we prevent it from remaining an extemporaneous initiative?

The active involvement that is created during the Workshop and the possibility of developing links with schools and bookshops aims to create connections to develop 'nudges', interventions aimed at changing behaviour to improve wellbeing, without restricting freedom and without constraints.