Fostering socially innovative and inclusive strategies for empowering citizens in the renewable energy market of the future

Duration: 2019 - 2022 ● Client: European Commission (H2020) ● WIP Role: Coordinator ● http://socialres.eu/

SocialRES’s aim is to foster energy democracy through social innovation and new ways of collaboration between cooperatives, aggregators and crowdfunding platforms active in the renewable energy sector. At the time being, there are no projects combining all these three aspects of social innovation addressed by cooperatives, aggregators and crowd-funders.

SocialRES sets the basis for a better understanding of the socio-economic, socio-cultural, socio-political and gender factors that influence the behavior of consumers in the energy system. This is done by several surveys and a comparative analysis of data coming from the real-life implementation of 9 case studies of cooperatives, crowd-funders and aggregators in order to address the following questions:

• What drives social innovation?
• Why do people decide to participate in renewable energy projects?

SocialRES plans to develop business models to define new ways of collaboration between cooperatives, aggregators and crowd-funders based on a SWOT analysis, interactive workshops and a hackathon involving the project partners and relevant stakeholders. SocialRES will provide policy makers with recommendations to create a more favorable legal and regulatory framework for social innovation.

SocialRES will establish a virtual platform for the exchange of best practices among the SocialRES case studies projects, external stakeholders and European citizens. This will encourage the uptake of social innovation and the empowerment of consumers as responsible actors in the clean energy transition. By unleashing the potential of social innovation, SocialRES will further the goals of the Energy Union ensuring a more secure, sustainable, competitive and affordable energy system for European citizens.