In October 2020, the Results Pack Social Sciences and Humanities in Energy Research featured PROSEU, a project that empowered ordinary citizens to play a key role in Europe’s transition to clean energy. Did it succeed in helping European prosumers – people who produce and consume their own renewable energy – become main actors in this transition?
The last time we spoke with Inês Campos, coordinator of the PROSEU (PROSumers for the Energy Union: mainstreaming active participation of citizens in the energy transition) project, the consortium was working on a roadmap to mainstream prosumerism until 2030 and 2050 by involving about 160 experts. A final set of policy recommendations have been published. Policymakers now have tangible propositions when drafting national legislation. “Prosumerism can contribute immensely to reaching our climate targets while making the energy transition socially inclusive and beneficial for all,” explains Campos. “To support that, the PROSEU consortium has worked with prosumer initiatives across Europe to study and learn, and now proposes concrete and timely policy recommendations for mainstreaming prosumerism in Europe.”
Looking back on the project that ended in February 2021, Campos comments on the biggest achievement. “PROSEU set the groundwork for mainstreaming citizens’ participation in distributed energy systems, as active consumers, and/or as members of energy communities.”
Project partners have delivered significant research into business models that prosumers are implementing in Europe, financial mechanisms being put to practice by prosumers and energy communities, regulatory barriers and challenges across Europe, as well as technological opportunities, for example, how much energy can be produced by prosumers through distributed energy resources until 2050. “All this has offered a baseline for current innovation focused on accelerating the uptake of distributed energy resources. This baseline knowledge just wasn’t there before,” states Campos. “There was a lot of piecemeal research on active energy consumers, prosumers, energy communities and distributed energy systems, but there wasn’t a systematic review of how these elements come together.”
“We were surprised to find that with many of the communities we worked with, there was a real-life impact,” adds Campos. “For example, the community went on to set up their own energy community in at least two cases. This was very rewarding for us. We tell these stories in our Prosumer Inspiration Book.”
“The fact that we received EU funding has been critical to PROSEU’s success and implementation,” Campos concludes. “During the project, stakeholders and citizens were more interested in participating because it was an EU-funded project.”
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