Climate change is considered one of the major problems of our society and citizens have realised the importance of acting rapidly towards its mitigation by pushing decision-makers for immediate action. The European Commission recently proposed its new European Green Deal, aiming to tackle this important problem. However, multiple European cities and regions have been more proactive and have already completed several actions regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, such as increasing renewable energy sources penetration and using high energy efficiency technologies. The funding of these Covenant action plans is based on European, national, regional or local resources but also on the contribution of citizens which have been mobilised to support local projects. Nonetheless, the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the need of further investments and financial support. How can municipalities gather the required financial resources to achieve their Energy Transition targets to tackle climate change?

An important tool towards this endeavour is increasing citizen funding on local climate action projects. Some innovative ways to achieve this will be presented in this second C-Track 50 webinar. Last year’s climate mobilisations demonstrated that citizens are ready to become a part of the Energy Transition, since their interest in climate issues has grown. Actions in the vein of citizen finance are crowdfunding and energy cooperatives, which will be discussed on the second webinar of C-Track 50. This will take place on the 9th of June (10:00 – 11:30 CET) and will host various first-hand practitioners as well as institutional actors.

Agenda

• Funding Climate Action Initiatives through Citizen Financing Instruments by Somesh Sharma and Catherine Foley, HIS
• Energy cooperatives: a different way of doing business in the energy sector by Daan Creupelandt, REScoop
• Raising Capital and Acceptance: Local Governments join hands through Energy Cooperative – The case of Neustadt an der Waldnaab County (DE) by Arthur Hinsch, ICLEI
• Crowdfunding of solar roofs in the city of Krizevci (HR) by Petra Orehovački, REA North & Lucija Topic, city of Krizevci

_{Source: FEDARENE}