Website: www.belief-europe.org

BELIEF promotes the Sustainable Energy Communities concept at European scale, setting up Local Intelligent Energy Forums in 20 communities from 11 European countries, including representatives from New Member States and Candidate Countries.

Each community will involve relevant local stakeholders. Together, they will prepare a Sustainable Energy Action Plan in line with a financial plan containing sufficient economic resources to implement their local initiatives and activities.

Context

Local authorities are at the most relevant level for the implementation of sustainable energy policies. BELIEF is targeting all European local authorities, especially urban communities. Forming Sustainable Energy Communities will improve local policy making, promote local energy citizenship and stimulate local sustainable energy markets.

Common activities of the 20 communities

• Set up Local Intelligent Energy Forums.
• Prepare Sustainable Energy Action Plans.
• Seek financial resources to turn these action plans into reality.
• Identify good practice methodologies and tools.
• Disseminate information, shining examples, results. methodologies and tools to European local authorities focussing on New Member States and Candidate Countries.

Methodology

BELIEF is preparing the ground for a larger dissemination of the Sustainable Energy Communities concept in European local authorities.

This will be done mainly through the:

• Organisation of 8 workshops and 2 large international conferences.
• Preparation and dissemination of 20 shining examples, methodologies, tools and publications (incl. a recommendation guide).

Expected results

These can be summarised as follows:

• Creation of a group of local EU pioneers showing new ways for the future.
• Improved capacity building in the 20 BELIEF communities involved.
• An EU replicable concept in line with the EU priorities on energy, sustainability, competitiveness and innovation.
• More advanced experiences to provide knowledge and know-how to the less advanced communities via the exchange of good practice.
• Information and methodologies widely disseminated throughout Europe, demonstrating that new ways can be generalised everywhere.
• Significant improvement of the existing levels of energy efficiency and use of RES in the 20 BELIEF communities thus bringing together local stakeholders and facilitating the way forward for larger scale investments.

What is a Local Intelligent Energy Forum?

A Local Intelligent Energy Forum brings to one table all local actors who work together to implement the Sustainable Energy Communities concept for an identified area. The Forum is municipal driven (or driven jointly with the support of the energy agency) and all local actors actively cooperate to prepare and implement a Sustainable Energy Action Plan.

The Local Intelligent Energy Forums can address the following three main axes:

• local policy making
• local energy citizenship
• local energy market

The BELIEF project is coordinated by Energie-Cités and funded by the Intelligent Energy - Europe programme as part of the Sustainable Energy Communities Key Action