RENEW - Renewable Energy through Networking, Education, and building a strong community Will for sustainability

Project Description

Inspired by interactions with community stakeholders, RENEW addresses the challenge of harnessing the goodwill of citizens to participate in sustainable energy community (SEC) initiatives while unlocking the potential of these communities to contribute to the global goal of net-zero by 2050. It is an unconventional approach to empowering SECs as it focuses on the co-development and validation of a framework for the inception, education, and operation of SECs. The approach is expected to succeed because it is user-centric, addressing the needs of citizens and promoting their satisfaction, acceptance, and active participation through systematic and empirical testing. At the concept and seed stage in 18 months, the team also connect, motivate, and educate citizens to encourage their engagement in the sustainable energy transition, leveraging microcredentials, workshops, co-creation platforms and delivering digital tools to facilitate the design, replication and sharing of best practice. This focus on education and engagement helps deliver impact by ensuring that the SEC initiatives across Ireland are technically viable, socially acceptable, and embraced by the local community. RENEW is expected to further deliver a nationwide impact by fostering the development of communities as active nodes of the grid through the co-creation of smart energy management systems.