On 31 March 2022 (10 am – 5 pm), the Research Center for Sustainability (FFN) of the Freie Universität Berlin together with the Thuringian Energy and GreenTech Agency (ThEGA) will host the Thematic Workshop "Renewable Energy Communities: Perspectives in Europe and Germany" as well as a policy round table. The meeting targets all entities and actors involved and/or interested in the implementation of RECs in Germany, including energy communities, cooperatives, municipal entities, energy agencies, associations and interest groups, public authorities and other political and energy market actors.

The German country desk involves a core group of approx. 40 stakeholders and a wider group of roughly 120 stakeholders. The stakeholders come mainly from target region Thuringia and model region Schleswig-Holstein, but also from other German federal states and organisations at the national level. The workshop is the fourth event of the German country desk.

The aim of the workshop is to present interim results of COME RES, to discuss the state of transposition and implementation of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) and its provisions for renewable energy communities (RECs) in Europe and Germany, and to address the German federal government's plans to improve the framework conditions for citizen energy. Dr Rosaria Di Nucci and Michael Krug from FFN will present good practice examples and interim results of COME RES.

In the round table moderated by Dr Dörte Fouquet (Becker Büttner Held and European Renewable Energies Federation) representatives from politics and administration of the EU, federal and state governments as well as associations will discuss how the EU, federal, state and local governments can support the development of renewable energy communities. Participants are Vera Kissler (European Commission), MdB Timon Gremmels (SPD parliamentary group), MdL Markus Gleichmann (Thuringia, The Left Party, Committee of European Regions), Angelika Behlig (Ministry for Energy Transition, Agriculture, Environment, Nature and Digitalisation Schleswig-Holstein), Dr Simone Peter (German Renewable Energy Federation) and Malte Zieher (Bündnis Bürgerenergie).

The event will take place online and mostly in German. Please find the agenda here.

Background Information: The Sustainability Research Centre has been coordinating the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project COME RES on renewable energy communities since September 2020. The consortium comprises 16 partners from 9 countries (You can find the COME RES Website here). In all partner countries, so-called country stakeholder desks have been set up as informal dialogue forums to discuss project results and current relevant policy issues. The target region in Germany is Thuringia, the model region Schleswig-Holstein.

If you would like to attend, please register by 28.03.2022 by completing the following form.