What do communities need to share the energy they generate? What will allow them to enter the energy market with that energy? Will it enable them to become self-sufficient? To reduce their energy bills? To minimize their community carbon footprint? To make these things happen, many changes – social, technological, infrastructural, financial and legal – need to happen at the same time. Also, it’s still far from clear how these changes will come together.

NRG2peers will map out all these different changes and see how they hang together in the case of actual energy communities. It will do so by carrying out rapid ethnographic research in pilot communities to develop a holistic as possible understanding of community development and collect valuable lessons learned.

Based on that map, it will develop a Readiness Level Framework. An interactive version of this framework will allow concerned parties, communities first among them, to assess which organizational, institutional, market, technological and social conditions need to be in place for energy communities to implement their own energy markets. Based on this readiness assessment, an Advisory App, developed by the consortium, will help communities (and policymakers) to take the next steps to increase readiness for p2p energy exchange. A Community Hub will facilitate mutual aid and exchange of communities across Europe.