The transition to an environmentally sustainable, low-carbon economy requires fundamental transformations in various sectors such as industry, technology, and especially in society as a whole. Adopting and encouraging community energy are the key policies to facilitate sustainable energy and ecological and social transition. The Sun4All methodology aims at the design, promotion and building of energy communities based on solidarity, to contrast energy poverty and foresee the engagement of vulnerable households that normally have many difficulties in becoming active members of an energy sharing project realising PV plants. The selection of the beneficiaries’ families in the urban context is a process both technical, including socio-territorial GIS-based analysis, and social, activating the participation of grass-root associations, local schools, and facilitators. The strategic role of the municipality is coherent with the SECAP and results in the offers of several public building roofs with PV plants that are the cores of the Sun4all Energy Communities and will ensure the delivery of economic benefits for the vulnerable households, while through workshops, site visits to the plants, and communication activities will increase the citizens’ knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits that go far beyond energy efficiency, which is only the starting point.
The improvement of energy efficiency entails important benefits both for the individual user, owner of the infrastructure, and for the community in general. In fact, Energy Efficiency is a strategic priority of the European Union. However, the great potential deriving from energy efficiency is currently untapped. The reason for this gap is essentially due to the reluctance of customers to commit financial resources for these projects. The EPC scheme allows to overcome this reluctance, offering the customer a wide range of services that exempt him from most of the risks and responsibilities associated with the implementation of the energy efficiency project. Nevertheless, a series of financial barriers hinder the application of EPCs, effectively limiting the use of a sophisticated contractual instrument, which could contribute to the development of the energy efficiency services market. This report examines the opportunity to encourage greater use of EPCs in Italy, using refinancing instruments.
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