Collaborative work is pivotal in the development work that the consortium proposes through the PANTERA CSA. Through this coordinated activity the consortium is confident that it will deliver a multi-dimensional platform of pan-European status and influence capable of leveraging coherence and trust as a pull towards enhanced R&I in energy systems centered around an integrated grid active and responsive. This proposed platform, can work for Local Energy Systems in an integrated PAN European Smart Grid with specific emphasis on the less privileged / low spending countries. It will bring together the attractiveness of successful partnerships being national, regional or European building through them the will for enhanced adaption to areas and partnerships that can broaden active participation for mutual benefit. Emphasis will be given to develop an innovative top-down and bottom-up approach for effectively identifying the key challenges in accelerating R&I activities in low spending countries. Formalize a governance structure capable of delivering targeted objectives that will bring under the same umbrella all active entities / stakeholders in the field of smart grids / storage and local energy systems to leverage synergies and maximize benefits. Develop enhanced knowledge-sharing mechanisms that help identify, discuss and structure the key R&I challenges. Deliver through the platform ready-made tools that will facilitate the collection of real data / results from on-going projects, build a useful shareable data repository, capable of supporting case studies of exploitable results, scenario building and local energy system analysis accessible by all interested stakeholders. Organize dedicated workshops which facilitate exchanges of experience and capacities between members of R&I community in collaboration with already on-going activities aiming to wider participation, strengthen objectives and extent impact of achieved results.

The 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) establishes a set of binding measures to help the EU reach its 20% energy efficiency target by 2020. Countries have also set their own indicative national energy efficiency targets. To reach these targets, EU countries have to implement energy efficiency policies and monitor their impact. The Commission has also the task of monitoring the impacts of the measures to check that the EU is on track with its 2020 target. The objective of the ODYSSEE MURE 2015 proposal is to contribute to this monitoring: • By updating two comprehensive databases covering each EU MS; ODYSSEE on energy consumption and energy efficiency indicators, and MURE on energy efficiency measures; • By providing new and innovative trainings and didactical documents to national, regional and local administrations in EU MS to raise their capacity and expertise in the field of energy efficiency monitoring and impact evaluation. • By extending the evaluation of the impact of energy efficiency from energy and CO2 savings, as already done in ODYSSEE, to the multiple other benefits. The updating of two databases ODYSSEE and MURE will play a key role to provide updated and centralized information required by each MS and the Commission to assess, monitor and evaluate energy efficiency progress and the state of implementation of measures and their impact. The project will provide innovative training tools and documents in a very user friendly way to public administrations to help them in implementing the monitoring of the progress achieved with indicators, in designing new policy measures and assessing the impacts of these measures, not only in terms of energy savings, but also in terms of the other benefits linked to energy efficiency improvements. Finally, the project will try to provide an assessment of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency policies for all MS combing existing evaluation and new calculations.

SEC-OREA enables local energy communities (LECs) to participate in the decarbonisation of the energy sector by developing advanced efficient algorithms and analytics technologies. LECs are an efficient way to manage energy by increasing the use of renewable energy sources (RES) at a local level. We aim to co-create an overarching LEC enabling framework with our stakeholders. Our goal is to create technical tools to empower citizens and place them at the core of the Energy Union. The consortium brings together expertise from Business, Climatology, Computational Methods, Secure ICT, and Power Systems. We reach across the EU with researchers, innovators and stakeholders in Belgium, France, Ireland, Latvia and Portugal. Stakeholders include a national meteorological service, municipalities and energy agencies who support the development of LECs, and a distribution system operator (DSO). We use climate services to gather energy-relevant pan-European indicators of climate trends and variability. We use better data to model energy consumption data to understand and create dynamic scenarios of electricity consumption. We create better ensemble models of climate dependent RES generation and consumer electricity demand. We create a set of mathematical optimisation models to efficiently solve the multilateral economic dispatch (MED) decisions of the LEC RES in a fair manner. We evaluate the implications of the LEC activity and net demand on sample grid topologies, and support the DSO to understand the impacts of, and requirements for LECs on the low voltage (LV) distribution network. This understanding supports better LEC and DSO decisions on asset reinforcement, network power flow and congestion management. We provide recommendations for an overarching LEC enabling framework to ensure safe reliable efficient sustainable operation of the LEC and LV network. Our framework will allow LEC members to take ownership of the energy transition, benefit from the new technologies we develop and so reduce their bills and their carbon footprint. We provide business model analyses, efficient scalable multilateral economic dispatch and energy analytics algorithms, and integrated climate/LEC/LV models to support our climatology, meteorological services, smart city and energy agencies stakeholder decision makers.

MultEE aims to improve the ease and quality of energy efficiency (EE) policy planning and implementation in the project’s partner countries and beyond, addressing the challenges of evidence-based policy-making in a multi-level governance setting. It contributes to making EE and sustainable energy planning vertically consistent between the national, regional and local level, to facilitating horizontal coordination between policy levels and to improving the quality of monitoring energy efficiency. The project pursues a two-faceted, yet integrated, approach in order to reach this objective: (1) building on a mapping of European best practices and experience from a pilot project carried out by the lead partner, country-specific solutions for effective monitoring and verification (M&V) based on bottom-up data will be developed and their implementation supported; (2) the implementation of innovative M&V schemes will be facilitated via coordination mechanisms developed and introduced together with the partners, aimed at spurring on exchange and cooperation between policy levels. The project pays particular attention to providing opportunities for peer learning between old and new EU Members States and neighbouring countries from Southeast Europe to partner countries from the EU and its South-Eastern neighbourhood as well as to disseminating results beyond partner countries and to other policy areas. One of the specificities of multEE is that its activities target the interplay between administrative levels rather than focusing on a single one of them. Particular focus will be put on capacity-building for the entities and officials involved with EE planning in the partner countries. MultEE will be put in practice by experienced partners within a strong consortium led by GIZ, drawing upon solid experience and a well-established network of contacts to ensure dissemination and high impacts within and beyond the project.

COME RES aims to facilitate the market uptake of RES in the electricity sector by supporting, with a set of specific activities, the implementation of the provisions for renewable energy communities (RECs) as defined in the new Renewable Energy Directive to be transposed in 2021. Taking a multi- and transdisciplinary approach, COME RES aids the development of RECs in nine European countries (BE, DE, IT, LV, NL, NO, PL, PT, SP). It covers different socio-technological systems including community PV, wind (onshore), storage and integrated solutions. The countries selected range from pioneers that have gained broad experience of community energy (CE) to countries that are just beginning to look at CE. COME RES analyses legal, socioeconomic, spatial and environmental characteristics, and the reasons for the slow deployment of RECs in selected target regions. Stakeholder desks consisting of the project partners and committed community, market and policy actors in each country take on the operational tasks. Both overall and specific objectives will be reached by i) analysing the potentials, barriers and drivers for RECs in the target regions, ii) carrying out stakeholder dialogues, iii) developing regional action plans and business-model proposals for target regions, iv) examining good/best practice cases that are transferable to specific local, regional and national contexts, v) initiating transfers of best practice solutions via policy labs supported by capacity development and training and vi) developing a renewable energy community platform. The consortium synchronises project activities with the transposition/implementation of the Clean Energy Package and its provisions for RECs in policy labs. Policy lessons with validity across Europe will be drawn and recommendations proposed. Over 85 stakeholders and market actors have provided letters of support expressing their commitment to support the project and implement its results.