Overview
Funding:
European Commission, Intelligent Energy Europe Programme
Timeframe:
01/07/2011 – 31/12/2013
Budget:
970 892 Euro
Contractors:
National Technical University of Athens, Greece (Coordinator); Energy Agency Upper Styria, Austria; North-West Croatia Regional Energy Agency, Croatia; BSERC, Bulgaria; IrRADIARE Ltd., Portugal; Municipality of Amyntaio, Greece; Town of Neumarkt, Germany; Asenovgrad Municipality, Bulgaria; Municipality of Judenburg, Austria; Serta City Council, Portugal
Description
The EU 2020 sustainable development vision provides an opportunity to tackle the current financial and economic crisis through maintaining local jobs and wealth. The regional authorities demonstrate their willingness to implement sound local sustainable energy policies, especially through their participation in the Covenant of Mayors. They are committing themselves to address the problem and become a driving force and frontrunner in the fight against climate change. It is important for them to be adequately supported in this respect.
This is particularly true for the rural communities. Indeed, the lack of technical capacity and the limited resources are the most important barriers for these areas, which are characterized by lower development rates and are especially afflicted by the continuing crisis that strangles their development efforts.
The eReNet Project aimed to add value to local actions in rural communities, creating an intelligent and integrated “Rural Web Energy Learning Network for Action”. The eReNet, mainly through peer to peer communication with all engaged actors, but also with the support of e-communication, aimed to foster the rural learning communities in the development, implementation and monitoring of their Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs), capacity building of the related actors through knowledge transfer from experienced communities and identification of bankable projects, matured enough to be included under national or EU structural funds.
A step forward for these efforts was the realization of the existing SEAPs’ methodologies and learning tools into a web application (e-application), contributing to the reduction of required time, municipality resources and capacities for the development of tailor-made SEAPs and their monitoring.
eReNet integrated 7 communities: 6 learning from Greece (Municipality of Amyntaio), Bulgaria (Municipality of Asenovgrad), Austria (Municipality of Judenburg), Portugal (Municipality of Sertã), Croatia (Rural Communities of Dugo Selo and Sveta Nedelja) and one experienced from Germany (Town of Neumarkt).