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.

We are currently seeing a deceleration of renewable energy growth in Europe. This is partly attributed to the challenges for financing renewable energy projects. Reduced access to conventional financing options over the past few years has triggered innovative financing schemes to emerge, with crowdfunding attracting a lot of attention. CrowdFundRES recognises the vast potential of crowdfunding for financing renewable energy projects. The project has been developed for and in cooperation with the three target groups: 1) Renewable energy project developers whose access to financing is getting more challenging 2) The part of the public that has an interest in investing even very small amounts of their savings in renewable energy projects 3) Crowdfunding platforms who act as intermediaries facilitating the financial transaction between the public and the project developers. The overall objective of the proposed project is to contribute to the acceleration of the renewable energy growth in Europe by unleashing the potential of crowdfunding for financing renewable energy projects. In order to achieve this, the work has been structured for achieving the following objectives: 1. Gain a deep understanding of the public’s perception of crowdfunding 2. Analyse the challenges faced by the application of crowdfunding for renewable energy projects in Europe 3. Develop guidelines that support easier, more effective and wider accepted practices in crowdfunding renewable energy projects 4. Apply the guidelines and review them based on practical experience 5. Improve the market and regulatory framework 6. Promote the crowdfunding concept and its advantages among those who could contribute or raise funds