Realising an accelerated expansion of renewable energy will require a switch from centralised to decentralised energy production and greater social participation, together known as energy democracy. The increase in energy democracy and social equity will be an essential part of the clean energy transition. A transition that could represent one of the most fundamental social, economic and technical changes in modern history. The most common businesses associated with social innovation in the renewable energy sector are Cooperatives, Aggregators and Crowdfunding platforms. These businesses facilitate consumers to take a more active role in the electricity system. Achieving sustained growth in energy democracy requires a better understanding of support structures for successful social innovation across technical, legal and economic systems. SocialRES aims to devise more effective ways of increasing social innovation leading to greater social acceptability as well as more durable governance arrangements and socioeconomic benefits. Through research excellence and co-creation of knowledge with relevant stakeholders, SocialRES will develop socially innovative and inclusive strategies for the energy system of the future. SocialRES will supplement the existing fragmented data on social innovations with new understandings from businesses, end-users and stakeholders to provide a comprehensive evidence base for policy design. The project will employ innovative techniques such as a Peer to Peer (P2P) crowd-investing for renewable energy sources (RES) projects, P2P lending and P2P virtual RES energy aggregator platform. The SocialRES team combines partners from a range of disciplines together with industry expertise to develop a comprehensive understanding of the strengths and limitations of the current renewable energy system to foster social innovation and to shape a roadmap for a future, more innovative and equitable system.

Within the Energy Union framework, the European Union (EU) is aiming at transforming the energy systems towards a sustainable, low-carbon and climate-friendly economy, putting consumers at its centre. Buildings play a key role in this transition as, on one hand they are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU and, on the other hand, the potential engagement of consumers through the demand-response mechanisms. To enable this transformation, distribution grids will face news paradigms in the ways they operate relying more on flexibility smart grids with capacity to safely host more renewable energy sources (RES) and integrate new loads, such as power to heat/cold, power to gas/liquid and new technologies, as well as electric vehicles (EVs) while advancing in security of supply and affordability. Therefore, this global picture will demand the generation of a new concept of connected ecosystem between energy system players and consumers. Under this scenario, the project consortium accepted this challenge and offers to develop the “REDREAM Project”, which not only will enable the effective participation of the consumers/prosumers in the energy market, but also will drive a profound change turning traditional company’s value chain into value generation chain, based on a revolutionary Service Dominant Logic paradigm. The main objective of the REDREAM project is to effectively move the consumer (as a residential, industrial and tertiary consumer) participation to the centre of the energy market through an open and co-creative ecosystem where all stakeholders will actively interact. This ambitious challenge will require the collection of demand response tools and services (energy and non-energy) capable of enabling the capacity for the consumers of participating in the energy market through an improvement of predictability of consumption patterns and consumer behaviour.

MUSE GRIDS aims to demonstrate, in two weakly connected areas (a town on a top of a hill and a rural neighbourhood), a set of both technological and non-technological solutions targeting the interaction of local energy grids (electricity grids, district heating and cooling networks, water networks, gas grids, electromobility etc.) to enable maximization of local energy independency through optimized management of the production via end user-driven control strategies, smart grid functionality, storage, CHP and RES integration. Two large-scale pilot projects will be implemented in two different EU regions, in urban (Osimo) and rural (Oud-Heverlee) contexts with weak connections with national grids. These pilots will test and promote the main project concepts: Smart energy system and Local Energy Community. A Smart Energy System is defined as an approach in which smart electricity, thermal, water, gas grids etc are combined with storage technologies and coordinated to identify synergies between them towards maximization of energy independency and reduction of operation costs. The purpose is to reduce energy carbon footprint while meeting energy demands and creating real and sustainable energy islands. To achieve this both physical networks (electricity, natural gas, district heating and cooling, water) and non-physical networks (mobility and citizens/communities) have to interact in order to become a Local Energy Community where inhabitants can act and exchange energy to provide reliable and cheap energy in colaboration. MUSE GRIDS will promote these two concepts not only in pilot projects but also in virtual demo-sites in India, Israel and Spain. Social and environmental aspects of smart multi-energy system transition will be investigated Osimo and Oud Heverlee citizens will be directly involved.The project involves leading EU companies and energy utilites and will be a muse of inspiration for dedicated policy redaction also providing insights to the BRIDGE initiative