 Hello everybody and thank you very much for joining us. My name is Brian Motherway here at the International Energy Agency in Paris. We're delighted so many people can join us this afternoon or this morning or this evening depending on where you are. For what I think it's going to be a really interesting and of course a very important discussion about the role of local energy communities in clean energy transitions. We at the IEA, as you know, talk about clean energy in very many ways. We look at all technologies, all fuels, all dimensions of the issues that are so important to us all around the world. And one we are putting more and more emphasis on is what we call people-centered clean energy transitions, where we think about this from a social dimension in terms of how people are involved in clean energy, how they're affected by clean energy policies and of course how can we make sure that the best policies, the best programs are in place to help people improve their quality of life, improve their access to affordable, clean and secure energy and of course in ways that benefit the most people, leaves no one behind and brings the best benefits including addressing climate change as rapidly as possible. And one growing dimension of course is this, of this is local energy communities. We're going to hear some really fascinating stories around the world where people are looking at how to involve local communities in clean energy, whether it's in terms of clean energy supply, how we use energy, how we work together, even how we own our energy systems as well as how we manage them and use them. And I think we're going to learn some really valuable lessons from the excellent speakers that have kindly agreed to join us for this webinar so we can benefit from their experience, learn what has worked and what hasn't worked, and maybe look for opportunities to extend the kind of models you're going to hear about in this webinar. And if you're joining us, we'll also very happily hear your questions. So if you want to put your questions in the Q&A box on Zoom, if we have time we'll certainly take as many of those as possible. I also want to say that a lot of our work here in the International Energy Agency on local energy communities, particularly in the context of renewable electricity, takes place within our program called 3DEN, which stands for Digital Demand Driven Electricity Networks, and therefore we're very grateful in particular to the Government of Italy and to the Minister and Ministry of Environment and Energy Security that support that work. So today we're going to really focus on the people dimensions, how are different people approaching, how to involve people in energy, how to engage people in more active ways, how can people benefit from the clean energy revolutions we see happening all over the world today, and how can we all learn from that as we continue to expand this area of work. And we're really excellent speakers who are doing this in many ways at a local and regional and international level, and I know we're going to learn a lot from them. So I'm not going to delay any further. I'm going to get straight into talking to our really great speakers. So first of all, thank you all for joining us and looking forward to learning from you all during the next session, and I'm going to go to Edouardo and Abish. Let's go first to Brazil to Edouardo Avila. Edouardo is the Executive Director of Revolue Solar, which is the first photovoltaic local energy community founded in a Brazilian favela with the aim of promoting the sustainable development of low income communities through solar energy. So Edouardo, thank you for joining us. It's a fascinating story that I know our audience are keen to hear. I want to start by telling us a bit more about Revolue Solar and just what makes this project special in Brazil, please. Hello Brian and everyone. Good morning here from Rio, Brazil. It's an honor to be here with you. I'd like to thank also Matieu and all the agency team that received as well while we were visiting there. About Revolue Solar, we are talking from Rio here and we are a non-profit organization that really focus on low income population here, the people that are underserved by the local utilities and by our current electric system. So we have a model that we have created here in partnership with local leaders from favelas and now we are replicating to indigenous communities in the Amazon region and popular housing systems that really depend on the autonomy for the community. So we have this partnership with them that we really focus on educational activities so that the community can have the autonomy to keep it running. So we have a professional education program that helps to form a technical, in technical aspects, electricians, solar installers so they can do the installation, the maintenance and create new jobs. We also have educational program for the prosumers in the community. They learn how to read a bill with solar energy, how to reclaim their rights with solar and really an educational program that also includes children, all the community and an important aspect is to form these leaderships in this community so they can do the management of the systems themselves. We also have an economic sustainability model for these systems. So if we can go for the next image, we're going to show, this is one example of, this was the first solar installation, solar installers, women in Brazil in favelas, installing the first solar energy cooperative ever in a Brazilian favela that relies on this new regulatory model that we have in Brazil for the shared generation. So in Europe and other parts of the world, the energy communities are traditional but now we are starting that model here in Brazil. And we are starting from the low income communities that really need the most, this new, this solar revolution, as we call it. The next image is going to show the people working on this cooperative that are 80% women, all the the board of directors is formed by black women from leaders from the community. And we are really partners with them, giving this technical regulatory administrative support and connecting this grassroots movement to the municipal and national level of government. And now we are helping the government in Brazil to design a public policy to bring these lessons learned in the field and to replicate it in a national level so to end my first talk here the next slide is going to show how we're working in the Amazon region with this same model of partnership, education, sustainability in all aspects, including economic sustainability. So they pay a monthly fee to keep it to keep the cooperative running to keep it to pay the operational costs. Part of the savings they have in the utility bill is paid as a monthly fee to cover the operational costs of the cooperative. We have also partnerships with technical schools and including public institutions of education to bring this autonomy to the community. So next slide is going to show this new project that we have in the Amazon. There were some solar systems installed there that were broken because they did not have this, this operation and maintenance and educational importance. So in this new project, we are getting there, and we are cleaning, we are requalifying all the solar systems installed in the last few years there, and giving this protagonism to the community. So I think next image is going just to show, I'm going to invite you all to be part of the solar solution, connect us in social media, and really thank you again, Brian, Mattia and all the agency team for the space and the partnership with us. Thank you. Thank you Eduardo and really congratulations on what you've achieved. It's really a fantastic story with the emphasis on, as you said grassroots involvement but also the emphasis on the involvement of women and local people and for their benefit. But I ask you to say a little bit about how this community came together. Was this a question of, how much, how much work did it take maybe on your part on revenue solos part to build this project of this community and tell us a bit about how this group formed in the first place please. Yeah, it's a very interesting story because the group was formed in the pre Olympic Games period here in Rio, where Babylonia this pilot project is a place that a lot of tourists, people from abroad come to see Rio it's very close to the beach, and we have, and we got together here. So very nice interesting groups we had people from Europe they used to participate in energy cooperatives in Europe. I was studying economics in the federal university that was like 200 meters away from the community, and we had local leaders that were already working with electricity reclaiming their rights with the utility here. And in some lunch and events informal events in the community, we got to speak to each other and to say oh, one of the biggest problems here is the access to energy and this relation with the utility and you have a lot of sun here. I have this model of energy cooperatives in Europe. I was studying energy transition, and we got together to to to to to to begin the idea of revenue solar, and our replication now because we are working for several years in this pilot community. So now we're replicating and how do we get to these new communities. We always depend, we always rely on strong institutions that are already in the community. We don't believe that we have to create new institutions, new structures in the favela we have to understand that there are the strong points of the favela we of general communities. Now we are in the Amazon as well, but strong institutions there, and we have a partnership with them, giving some concepts and some technical support, but also rely on every every time relying on these strong institutions that are already there. So the group is already formed in this communities, you know, and we do a partnership with them, giving these fundamentals and helping them to go to grow. Thanks Eduardo and again looking forward to hearing more from you later congratulations and what you've achieved there in revenue solar but let's go next now to South Africa. My name is Ney Blum who is a researcher at the Selenbosch University Center for complex systems in transition. And China thanks for joining us and and and we'd love to hear what's going on in South Africa, but particularly, I know that you're involved in a really exciting project at the Linnidoc smart embedded residential microgrid, which was escom the national utilities first co owned community smart grid project. So please tell us a bit about Linnidoc and what has happened there please. Thank you Brian thank you for having me thank you everyone. Thank you Josh and everyone from I. Yeah so line dock is about 12 kilometers away from Selenbosch, and Selenbosch is probably about an hour's drive from Cape Town in South Africa. We're living in the Burland in the wine region of the Western Cape, and this eco village was established in the year 2000. And there's about 38 houses currently built on this property. But there's probably a little bit more households, more than one household staying in a house. The next thing that I want to tell you about is a pilot project that is calm, which is like Brian also said the national utility of South Africa. It was a pilot project that they ran, and that started in 2016. Of course, this community is well known to be socially economically mixed, which means that the Alice M is a very diverse sort of having low income households living in the same property as very high income households so part of this intentional community I mean they, like I said they have diverse incomes, but they also ecological or environmentally aware, and would like to put themselves in the place where they've used a lot of energy efficient ways to create houses using cop using sandbags using all kinds of different and interesting building methods. And of course, the original goal why escom decided to choose this community was because of the diverse income that the community represent and to taste the possibilities of energy trading platform in South Africa because you have many places in Africa in how 10 and Western Cape where you have lower income communities right next to very rich kind of high income areas and they were trying to see if there's a way that one could find the energy trading platform for this. On a small scale they tested this with 27 households. So it is a mini grid network that is still grid tied that they installed on the rooftops of the embedded solar PV on the rooftops of these 27 households originally currently to only 26 is taking one decided to not take part any longer. What is quite interesting about this is that of course there's an array of embedded solar PV this six panels they have full capacity in the entire village of 41 kilowatt peak. And, yeah, so I think that the 20, that's what the 26 households that's currently part of this now of course, this is in theory the capacity but not all roofs are facing north and not all roofs are reaching the full capacity that they can. So of course, yeah, this is what you get with solar right and then so they also connected to a free, like a three phase 100 KVA line that comes into this area. It does not only serve the community from the eco village there's also a school next to them and also sustainability Institute which is a part of Stanford University, a sort of a masters program that they run on that side so they all share the same utility with the table. And, of course, this pilot is very interesting but has also many like challenges and also the very interesting key learning points but yeah, I think that's the basics. Thanks very much. And again, congratulations. It's a really interesting project. And thank you also for teaching me how to pronounce line of Doc so that's useful. Is line of Doc a typical community do you think, or would you say in some ways it was one that would be easier to build a product of this or harder or would you think in terms of replicability it's fairly typical. I mean, like I said earlier, I think that line doc represents a small area, or like pockets in South Africa in the sense of these very typical position that some of our neighborhoods are in where you have very, very strong low income areas and I think that of course that is a benefit if you want to look at like energy trading platform where one assuming that someone with a lower income has a lower in energy use, compared to someone from the other side I mean, some of the I think challenges that that is come faced in this was okay one, I think one thing that is always a challenge when you do community projects is funding so in this case one would think that okay now we have a funding this is a state utility it's a monopoly but of course they have their own challenges currently in the last couple of years I mean we've been having really bad load shedding, which is a power outages in the in the country. And I mean so of course they run in their own, they had amazing goals to test even electric cars connecting to these systems and they have that really good ideas but I think they ran in the in their own capacity and they ran into financial trouble with that. And I think one other thing that was a kind of a challenge for us in, I think in for them in in reaching this goal was so in South Africa we have a national energy regulator called nurse SAR which regulates the tariffs that you, that you charge for something so of course because this is the experimental site. It was very hard for them to kind of find this, you know, sort of a tariff that could fit to this program and of course with any social technical installation, it's messy you know you have many challenges when it comes to user and technical design to, you know, bring this together. And I mean Landoc was was not any different I think that a lot of technical challenges were coming around soon after and I mean, I think it was a combination of one people not understanding how batteries or how the system work and then overworking the solar when once, of course you had the load shedding that could assist you in your solar, your solar, you know, system in the day but anyway, and then of course we had in the something that you see sometimes with solar installations is that you have challenges when you appliances and your wiring is is kind of not used to this stable current you know and then they they sort of play up. And I think a lot of people felt like wow now since I had solar things are not positive for me anymore I feel like my I have to get in electricians have to pay call out fees for this so I mean the people I think felt a little bit maybe misunderstood in in the in the intention that or the goal that was there and then also the installation process and the technical side of things that that obviously with, like I said research technical you always have these little challenges. And then, yeah, I think that. And then one last thing was obviously the net metering, which is something that you know that if you. I mean this is probably one, a very interesting learning point that we've learned is that one would think that you know using a mixed income group to actually regulate and see how you can do the training of the trading of energy. And what this community is that they are obviously they very environmentally friendly so they were they were not very big users so of course that was another challenge and then, of course a good challenge and key learning point is that when you do use a community like this it's good to use the eco village right where people do composting and they use different ways of building their houses to to to improve the energy efficiency levels. So I think that was probably the most important learning point or. Yeah, key learning point that we we found in this entire pilot and case study. Thank you very much Sharni very interesting learning is there that I think we'll certainly simulate some discussion as we go forward but let's turn that to Valerio Cavicchio Valerio thanks for joining us Valerio is renewable energy community business developer at NLX and NLX I'm sure many people know it's a very large global business that works across cities communities businesses households in many parts of the world and so Valerio maybe you can stop by telling us in what ways you work with communities and indeed why has NLX decided to work with communities. Well, thanks. Thanks, Brian and thanks for and Eduardo for sharing your experience I would, I would like to start answering your questions, saying that we decided to invest in energy communities because we have seen an increasing demand of people and engaging and investing in the energy system in a different way. And communities comes with a lot of benefit we see a lot of people asking for accessing those benefits, and these benefits are reduced energy bills, for instance, a long term energy prices. And we are seeing that when a citizen or a company's join an energy community can cover itself from the exposure to the market prices. And this is a great benefit for them. Another benefit is, of course, the direct participation in the energy market as Sean mentioned in the project in the pilot project. And of course another benefit is the improvement in sustainability. So, all these benefits are moving and are pushing and increasing the demand for accessing the energy communities. And that's why we are investing and developing energy community solution for answering this, this demand. But for us, the lesson is that we can't run successfully an energy community globally. I mean, in every country, if you don't have some really fundamental ingredients on the table. And these ingredients are first of all, informed customers that are willing to participate. And as I mentioned, they are growing more and more over time. So this is not any more a problem. The other ingredient is the technology. Today, PV plants are accessible and mature technology. But you also need resilient grids that can host this energy flow. And the third probably the third ingredient you need is a regulatory framework that is stable and clear. So as Sean just mentioned, there was some confusion in in their pilot project regarding the tariff. So we see these three ingredients in from customer technology available technology and regulatory clear regulatory framework as necessary in order to in order to run successfully an energy community. So once we have these three ingredients in place in a country, we, we are confident that we can come and propose our commercial offer that if you if you can move to the next slide is composed of a wide range of solution that comes from the advisory up to the electric mobility. So this is a really wide range of products in our portfolio that helps our customers and citizens to go through the energy transition towards, of course, net zero target. In particular, what we are talking about today is is energy community. So if you can focus on the bottom right part of our portfolio, you can see that we developed a distributed energy products that are composed of PV system. And of course, battery and energy storage systems, but also an energy community platform, which is crucial for us to share with energy community members, the way they are consuming the way the, the, the power plant is producing and optimizing the match between consumption and production. So if you go to the next slide, the, the, the goal of nlx is is really to optimize optimize the virtual self consumption that happen within an energy community. And we do this by doing a several activities, such as targeting members, because, as you know, if you, if you take random customers, you may not have a good match when you see the aggregated profile of consumption. So the first very first step is to compose, let's say this is aggregation. And in a, in a way that the, the total consumption is optimized. And then on top of that, we provide other solutions, according to the availability of the members, because the good thing of energy communities that everyone come with their own availability. So if you don't want to invest money, you just want to consume energy and take the benefits you can join the community and give your consumption to the community. You don't want to invest in a power plant, but you don't have consumption, you can, you can enter in our business model and invest and be the asset owner. If you don't, if you don't want to invest and you don't have consumption, maybe you have a land. You can rent this land and make it available for the community. So the real plus for us in the energy community paradigm is this flexibility towards the members of the community. So if you want to optimize this, this dynamics, so you can, you can access this wide range of products, if you wish, and you can use a solution, our solution such as EV charging or storage or even comfort management that is a connector that optimize the eating ventilation and air conditioning. So the message here is that it's, we developed a portfolio solution that can switch the needs and goals of each kind of members. And we are confident that when the three ingredients I mentioned, so in firm customers available and secure and resilient technology and grids and are clear and simple regulatory frameworks are in place. So we can really support any kind of energy community around the world for creating a more sustainable and equitable future for the next generation to come. Thank you very much for Larry. It's really interesting what you're doing and I can see from what you're saying and then from that last slide that technology is really important here digital technology is really important. If you say a word first of all about, would this be possible with that's kind of some of the digital technologies that help manage such a system, but also when you're trying to engage a community of different types of people. Does, does the role of kind of let's say what I call advanced smart technology help things or does it doesn't become a barrier for certain people that they they need to be kind of tech savvy to get involved maybe you could just say a bit about that interface of people and technology please. So the basic bricks of our solution is a PV and a web platform. So when you have a PV system and a web platform and every members can see their behavior and can see their consumption and converting in a in a revenue. And you start changing your habits and get used to the patterns that may help maximizing your self consumption. But on top of these, we are not imaging a society when where we every day we pay attention on the production of the PV plant. So it may happen that I'm home and I want to start some some electrical devices according to this availability, but it may not. So when you can't, there is the software there is the algorithm that can help so there may be another member of the energy community that invested a bit more on this kind of solution, and is going to cover this extra production and is matching with his consumption, this PV production. So I think that these are complementary approach on one side of the human habits that I think can change over time. The more we we develop regulatory frameworks that give a direct remuneration to see this and according to their effort to match the production the renewable production. So we will see more and more changing habits. On the other side, we can't expect to dramatically change our habits and our society. So we need to use AI, if you wish, or in general algorithms to program and change and be resilient and flexible to the signals we have from these PV plants. Thanks for Larry. And just one other quick question before we go to our next speaker because in your opening remarks, you articulated very well a number of the reasons why communities benefit from this kind of approach. But maybe you could say a bit more about NLX's motivation in terms of what why move in this in this direction of community engagement as opposed to more conventional ways of engaging with your customers. We see that we are as a company as an L we are moving from transmission and distribution mainly company to an energy service company. So we see that the services related to energy are becoming more crucial over time, because you, it's there that you really create the relation with the customers, you can, you know, when you, when you work in the business of energy. For example, in the commodity. The message may be only based on price or the last offer or the money you can save from a new commercial offer. But I think that services. We can provide to our customer base, we can put us on another level of the conversation, because energy is not anymore a commodity, because you know, we are starting understanding the externalities of energy. So, if 10 years ago, you just turn on the light and use your appliances. Now you start thinking, okay, but what happens when I turn on the light, I got emissions somewhere else, I got an impact on the environment. So it depends on what which kind of energy you are using, and it's not anymore a commodity, because, you know, the definition of commodity is, is something that is shiftable, you can use this or that is the same but if you use gas fueled energy. It's different if you use PV power plant energy and all the energy efficiency product we are providing are all aligned to this vision to let's say support the customer through this path to the net zero targets. So I don't know if I answered your question. You did it very well. Thank you. It's very interesting. Thank you. Let's go now to a Della test or over, who is unit head in the director general for energy gg nr at the European Commission. Della, thank you very much for joining us and we see the great work that you and your team are doing in the context of the European Commission's increasing focus on the role of communities in energy and particularly in the last few years. We see a lot of focus on the role of communities in energy initiatives across the European Union and so maybe to by way of start you can tell us why the Commission has decided to prioritize communities in this way and what results you've seen so far. Thank you very much and many thanks for the invitation to be here in this very interesting seminar. So in the European Union. We have been very much trying to put the consumer at the center of the energy market over the last 10 years at least. As we see more and more decentralized renewables coming, coming online. And hence, that is of course an opportunity for consumers to be directly involved in different forms. And now during the energy crisis we have seen that renewables promise being the more affordable type of energy. And we have seen that consumers who had direct access to renewables were much better off during the energy crisis. So, community energy, different types of it are directly promoted by the European Union in our legislation, but they are of course only one form how consumers can get directly involved. Yeah, this is for me just transition or kind of the people center transition is very much about involving individuals in the green energy transition. And of course we have different types of individuals we have people who invest in solar panels they produce their own renewable electricity. Then we have people who cannot do that, because they, they don't have the finance, and hence we are promoting concepts such as energy sharing, where people who don't have their own roof. They can access renewables produced by someone else. And we also promote the concepts of energy communities and energy community is a legal entity, which is created with the objective to share energy or maybe also to supply energy. Energy community can do different things. Yeah, it can also store energy it can produce store supply or share within its members. And energy community in Europe. The concept that we have is is is is a legal entity which is nonprofit, which has environmental and social objectives. And here I when I was listening to the presentation from Brazil, for example, this is very much what we are also trying to do in Europe. Energy communities or energy sharing are a very good way how to involve those people who would never be able to access renewables. Yeah, it's people who are currently stuck on fossil fuel contracts which are very expensive and they very often receive social tariffs or other kind of subsidies to be able to pay their energy bills. For these people, it is a very good opportunity to access cheaper electricity but also it is a very good opportunity to build more inclusive societies to support local communities. And there I would say this might be even a bigger benefit actually than the cheaper energy. That's what we've seen that this type of initiatives have a huge impact on on the social cohesion and community life. And very often people learn new skills, they gain more confidence to engage in other other activities of their life. So, beyond cheaper energy we very much value the advantage of social inclusion and and and community building and and very often we actually see also in Europe this type of schemes in socially excluded areas. Sharing of energy within a social housing, where even social housing company install solar panels, and then the inhabitants who are all tenants and they will never be able to invest in renewables themselves. They can share energy in this way. So yeah it's a it's a in terms of what we see in Europe in terms of energy communities we have about 10,000 of them across European Union. The uptake is of course different, different across different member states also for for legal reasons in some countries it is still quite difficult to set up an energy community or start an energy sharing scheme. In other countries that is more of a tradition. So, yeah, it's a very interesting area of social innovation as you said Brian at the beginning, the center or decarbonized energy is not only about technology is very much about people and how they see it and how they communicate with this type of technology so social innovation is is a very important area as well. Thanks. Thank you very much, it's really interesting what you're doing and just done that point about social cohesion or think is really interesting. Since then of how big do you think community energy will become is it does it only suit certain types of communities or do you think in a decade's time, everybody will be in kind of community energy schemes. How, how important do you think that a community approach will be in the clean energy transition for Europe. Well, as I said, the energy community so community energy is only one way how, how people can access renewables and how can they share access to renewables. We have estimations that by 2050, just under 50% of European consumers will be also prosumers, so I think it's 42% or something like that. Under 50%. So, that's what we expect according to our models. So that less than 50% of European consumers will be producing their own electricity, renewable electricity. So there is of course big scope for energy communities and energy sharing. So that those people who cannot invest in solar panels themselves or access. We have also schemes of wind energy community wind energy. Yeah, so it doesn't have to be only solar. So, there is set any scope also for efficiency purposes, because solar panels also have carbon footprint, you know, and so if we can use more efficiently what we produce. So it's not only injected into the grid as an excess, but it is directly shared within a community that also helps to reduce the need for installment of solar panels. Yeah, so I don't have a number to tell you, but certainly there is potential and certainly in Europe there is a big interest due to the energy crisis, where all European consumers are now very, very much aware of their energy bills that has not always been the case. Now, everyone is very interested in the energy bills. And hence we have a lot of interest in renewable energy and not everyone can invest themselves. So certainly these type of schemes have have a big potential. Thank you Adele and I think that resonates what we heard from Valeria by people thinking more about how to use energy but also where their energy comes from which clearly is very central to the communities model. Thank you for that. Let's go now to Rena Suri. Rena, thank you for joining us. And I know it's later in the evening there so we appreciate you joining us. Rena is the Executive Director of India Smart Grid Forum. Rena and the organization the Smart Grid Forum are really leaders internationally looking at questions around energy transition smart cities, electric mobility, particularly with some very innovative work in India. Thanks to Rena. We've been hearing different perspectives from different parts of the world but I know you've had quite a lot of hands on experience about involving local communities in energy in India. So maybe you could tell us a bit about that work and how you've seen it evolve over the last few years. Thank you Brian and for having me here as part of this important initiative and apologies for joining a bit delayed because of the weather change that we are experiencing in India. It's like you know it's summertime but we are getting very good rains and it's nice and cloudy here so we are not complaining but yeah it's a change here and we are dreading you know how the summer is going to be going forward. But thank you so much once again and I would like to say a few words about our forum, which you've already said a couple of things. Since its inception in 2011 India Smart Grid Forum, we've been working on accelerating development of smart grid technologies, bringing together all the different stakeholders, including government, electric utilities, policymakers, energy regulatory commission people and as well as you know bringing the communities and consumers together. So we've been emphasizing that with the transformation of the past sector of systems towards the decentralized model, consumers will play a key role going forward and are playing a key role and they need to you know to take an active role and lead the way when it comes to the energy transition by making lifestyle changes by investments and saving energy cutting down on bills and reducing the environmental footprints. So like you know India experiences like you know from the developed countries versus India we still are trying to reach out to all parts of India in terms of providing the energy access and especially in the areas where you know the energy has still not reached the electric lines are still not there. The community plays a big role in you know providing access to a basic energy needs and the concept of energy communities, you know from the experience in India has been relatively new and it has gained significant traction in the recent years initially energy communities were playing primarily focusing on improving energy access as I said you know in the areas where you're still trying to reach out in the rural areas by promoting the distributed energy generation and storage but over time we have seen that you know the scope of energy communities has expanded it has started to include urban areas as well. And today energy communities in India are focusing on promoting renewable energy generation demand side management energy conservation measures to reduce carbon emissions and combat the energy the climate change that we are experiencing. So one of the notable trends I would like to highlight you know the evolution of energy communities in India that we've been working and with from experience is that the increasing use of digital technologies, you know that to manage the energy systems that they have supported. So for, for example, many energy communities are using smart grid technology iot devices and data analytics to optimize the energy consumption and improve the grid stability. So overall, the evolution of energy communities in India has been characterized by, you know, growing emphasis on a suit of sustainability innovation and community participation. And as these communities continue to mature and evolve they have the potential to play a significant role in shaping the India's energy landscape and how we have been working and some of the initiatives you know initiatives, which I would like to highlight from India's forums experience and the projects that we have been working with these communities to start with. We have done three, like you know projects bringing the local communities together for peer to peer trading of solar energy, and which is a promising approach for local energy communities to optimize the use of renewable energy resources and in a peer to peer energy trading model households businesses and other energy consumers with solar PV can sell access electricity. They can rate to their like you know and sell to their neighbors or other buyers in the same community. And this approach can help, you know, to promote local self efficiency, reduce transmission losses, and also support the adoption of renewable energy technologies and the uptake of renewables which India has seen as per in the targets that we have set. So, this, you know, with this background, the ISGF along with our partner for technology partner for blockchain, we together have implemented three pilot projects on peer to peer trading of the roof of solar and three states in India, one in other for this Delhi and West Bengal bringing, you know, different local communities and consumers to get to trade trade between more under the regulatory stand walks to sell the excess solar energy to their neighbors and peers. So the consumers were able to set us, you know, a price higher than the net metering tariff for residential consumers and was lowered which was lower than the residential tariff that the utility charges to the consumer for consumption of the electricity. So thereby, like, you know, ensuring profitability for both buyer and seller. So it's all had customers who want to buy green energy, green power by allowing them to purchase energy from a rooftop solar through peer to peer trading. So based on the recommendations from these pilots that we have implemented from like, you know, in the state of what the pitch I would like to highlight that the regulator has already issued. It's cleaning up of this and bringing more consumers together to benefit from this team. So where we see that energy, you know, communities will pay a key role in taking the, you know, things forward. And recently guidelines have been released for peer to peer solar energy transactions through blockchain based platform by the regulator in which is a groundbreaking regulation which is expected to open up a new era of local energy technologies, transacting clean energy amongst their peers. And this will be an important step towards net zero power sector in India. Overall, I would say that you know peer to peer trading has the potential to empower the local communities and promote the adoption of renewable energy technologies. And there are still some regulatory and technical challenges that need to be addressed to enable its widespread adoption in India where we are advocating and consulting bringing all different stakeholders and the communities together. And we're looking forward to like, you know, adoption of this in a larger part of India. One more project I'm with ISGF has undertaken is a pilot on implementation of time of use tariff, again in the state of Uttar Pradesh, and which is one of the largest states in India. This pilot is being implemented under again a regulatory sandbox approach in which the regulator would accord has accorded permission to conduct the time of use scheme in India we have many states have time of data. In terms of time of use where you know, we set a price on on different at different hour in the day to for a consumer to benefit from the search from the benefit from the like you know the extra benefit that is done to shift the energy from peak load to a non peak hour. So again, this kind of an scheme will was only possible by in bringing the communities together, the customers and giving them the understanding about the project, we have about 50 residential industrial commercial consumers on board with the load, total load of load of about 50 megawatt and they are shifting their energy loads from one time of the hour to a non peak hour and getting benefited from that. So this is a time of use scheme is a real time price signal that that we are sending with, you know, on the mobiles and requesting them to shift the load. So this five with this pilot we are estimating that you know the, we will have the discounts have a better understanding of how much load shifting can be achieved by this kind of time of use introduction of time of use status scheme reduction in their power purchase cost and the difference in the revenue that they be seeking. So, one of the examples is that you know with the, like, you know, months we have experimented with this time of use tariff, we have seen that some of our high end consumers, they have been able to reduce their energy consumption to as as much as 30 like Indian rupees, and which is a significant amount for industry to reduce on so going forward when we are looking forward to a larger scale implementation of this kind of a scheme which will be really benefited to not only consumer but to manage the duck up that we are facing by for the utilities. This will help, you know, with bringing into the introduction of this through the communities together and bringing all the customers, you know, together and taking things forward. You see, these are some of the initiatives I wanted to highlight and the many more, but I hand the stage over to you, Brian and I'll be happy to share more experiences that we've had in bringing the energy communities together to take new technology initiatives forward and supporting the transition that India is looking for. It's great to hear what you're achieving and congratulations. And also congratulations on some rain at last I know it's been hot there so it's good to hear. But let me start with where you left off we're talking about scalability and growth. So, first of all, what you've achieved is impressive and you made it clear that you know it's profitable for the buyers profitable for the sellers there are community but also, it's taken a lot of work on your part you've had to break down regularity barriers you've had just been what I can describe as a lot of transaction costs so do they disappear with scale how can you scale up based on will it always be. Let me put it this way will it always be more work to take a community approach or cannot be scaled up and you know in a broader way. So, like, you know, from the experience that we had from the two projects that I mentioned one, since it's a, it's a regular like you know it's a power sector is totally governed by the regulators, and so the very first approach was to get the regulator on board and get his buying on getting a go ahead to the utility for scaling it up and, you know, involving the utility and customers together to be able to, you know, have the buying to make them understand the benefits and be, you know, help have them on board to be able to take it to another level. And in India, you know the numbers that we are talking about like in the state of the nation. The consumer are like you know two third of the total American population of America. So that's that's the kind of population we are talking about. So when we talk about scaling it up we talking like, you know, billion or very, very huge number. And definitely, you know, energy communities will are going to play a very significant role. We need to just find the right Dutch points we need to just find the right places to connect and you know, a price them about the benefits it's going to bring to the whole community to be able to help them take this forward. And are there limits on growth arena and could this become the future of energy in India or will it always be for certain communities that have certain let's say social characteristics or even technical characteristics or how big can this get do you think So definitely like it has limitations in terms of like, you know, one trial talk about from the utilities perspective, you know, India, the utilities are struggling to even meet their ends in terms of their expenses that they're billing is not accurate as per the bills are not paid as per a timely in a timely manner and they're the huge debts that they are struggling with. The very first technology idea, they like you know getting there buying is the toughest one because everything like you know in any kind of change in the process, they relate to reduced billing. Having them on board was like you know with our experience we have seen that was the biggest challenge, because of the challenges they've been facing. But yes, from the consumer point of view, the high end customers who are facing like you know having huge energy bills, getting them on is the easiest but then again they are the highest revenue earners for the utility. So any reduction in the usage was ultimately, you know, reducing the revenue for the utility. So we have to keep a balance but you know from renewable energy integration point of view when India has set such a huge target of 500 years of what coming into play and anyways consumer will be empowered to use their own energy. We have to look at all these different business models involving the energy communities and utilities together so that you know they with the uptake of renewables the there's a win-win for both consumers and like you know electric utilities. Thank you very much Rina. So colleagues, again, anybody joining us free to pop some questions in the Q&A of the zoom and we're getting some quite interesting questions which I'll put a few of them now to our excellent panelists who've been really giving us some interesting food for Todd and one question that's come in in a couple of different forms is around building trust in communities and it seems all of you have interesting dimensions to this because it's different kind of engagement so I might actually involve you all in various ways in this question of trust maybe Eduardo I'll start with you about you have a very local model so maybe you could say a bit about how you build that trust let's say between, especially, you know, in the sense of outsiders versus insiders and a related question that's come in is how do you build up a model that will sustain beyond your direct involvement or is this something that will always need hands on involvement or is it something that can basically sustain itself ultimately. Thank you for the question Brian. I understand that social projects in general that target low income communities. Most of them face the problem of being implemented in a top down model. And this creates a feeling of this community is not trusting projects that come outside, especially in Brazil I'm talking about Brazil I have this experience here. So, it's very important to build. I saw that one question talked about participation methods, participatory methods, not only giving the information in one direction but also promoting the participation of the communities in the designing planning of the project. So, I think this is the most fundamental aspect to build this trust to involve the beneficiaries in the designing of the program. And this can be scaled up. We have some examples in the world of a big participatory moments and big participatory listening to the communities. In Brazil is one very good reference in other fields not energy. We are lacking that on energy designing programs but in health in education we have like regional forums to hear the demands of the population and also federal places for them to have their voices heard. So, this is one aspect that has to come together with education, I think, so they can have the concepts and the tools that enables them to participate. Yeah, this can be scaled up. We are in that process. There is also one question that was directed to me, suggesting us to produce or asking if we have a guidebook to help this development of energy communities in a respectful approach. This is very important. And we are in the process of producing that guidebook. So, this question came in the right way. So, we are producing that guidebook with the step by step on how to hear the community how to involve them. And because we understand that this involvement is part of the success method that enables this community after the project is implemented to do the maintenance to do the management of the systems, a part of that maintenance and management. And we also understand that other parts of other complex aspects of the maintenance and management has to be done, have to be done by the utilities. We understand that utilities have an important role in this new economic model, but they have to shift their business model. They have to shift their approach to local communities, but we understand them and that them and local municipality government have an important role in promoting this fair energy transition. Thank you, Eduardo. And you said earlier on that you're now working with the Brazilian government to put policies in place to support these kind of approaches. So, what would be the key elements of such policies? What can national government do to enable these models? Great. Yeah, we are in the beginning of this government, so we are in the beginning of the conversation, but we already have some ways to go. We are planning to integrate a distributed solar energy in a social way to the solar, to the popular housing system program that we have in Brazil. It's called My Home, My Life, Minha Casa, Minha Vida program. And we have two million new homes being built for the next three years for our low-income people, so these will be integrated with solar. We also have a big problem in the Amazon region, more than one million people without access to electricity. And we have a specific line of the program there that also answers to another question that came here if these energy communities could be integrated with battery. So yeah, for sure, the integration of solar energy with battery is very important for these areas which don't have access to the grid, which is in the Amazon region, and has to do some different mechanisms to adapt to the cultural and the territory of the Amazon. But also batteries can be included in places that have access to the grid, because we have a very big problem here, especially in low-income communities like Favela in Brazil. And the number of outages, the blackouts of energy interruption of supply. So the batteries can be used as a backup source to keep this stability. This also answers another question, which is, what are the characteristics of successful energy communities? I believe that engagement of the population, lower costs, jobs and income created, the maintenance being made, and the quality of the energy access to stop to minimize these power outages. Thank you, Eduardo. It's very comprehensive, very interesting. But Dela, if I could turn to you on this question of trust, because, you know, Reena was talking about the scale of India in a state like Udub Pradesh, and you have similar scale issues in Europe. So when we talk about, when we hear from Eduardo about local community involvement and local connectivities, bottom up, that's difficult to do at your scale and from Brussels. So how do you see the respective role, let's say, of what the Commission can do versus national government versus local actors? How does Brussels stimulate these actions at a community level across the Union? Thank you. I would just first like to stress that the objectives of the European Commission is to have high share of renewables in the energy mix. Yeah, we are helping member states with that. We have objectives at national level. Then how this is achieved, of course, is up to member states and we are favoring diversity. So I'm not saying that all this renewable electricity has to come from energy communities. They have a very important role to play, but of course we have also centralized investments, big investments, and then we have decentralized investments. So we are favoring variety and energy communities are one of the ways how to engage consumers, citizens, and it's a very, very good way. But there are others of course. And so the role of the European Commission is to provide an enabling legislative framework. So to make sure that these type of initiatives are possible, that they are not undue restrictions and barriers for this type of initiative. So legislation at EU level is ensuring that enabling framework, removing barriers. We have also been doing some concrete work on what are the barriers that energy communities currently still face in Europe. And then we work closely with member states to help remove these barriers. So our role is mainly the legislative. Also in some cases they are helping with seed finance to help this type of projects to come into life. Thank you, that's very interesting. Sharne, if I could ask you about this question of trust as well, because I think it's quite interesting in your case, a local community that has kind of unique characteristics being an eco community but also as you said quite a range of types of people that have different types of building, but also the role of SCOM, the utility and like in every country. Some people like the utility some people not so much so maybe you could say a bit about that question of trust how trust was built up among all of the actors in line of doc and how it's maintained over time as part of this energy community. Thank you for asking that question, Brian. I think that in the lined up case study it was quite an interesting experience to see how the SCOM representatives actually engaged with the community and I think that it was. Yeah, they used home owner association meetings that was dedicated completely to the discussions around implementation and where different members have different questions and all of this. I think that some of the things that I found was kind of a highlight in these moments was, especially in the beginning I think that the intention was very pure from the SCOM side to communicate while to actually engage with the community to hear the contribution in this space and I think later on when budget issues came in I think it became a little bit more tricky to deal with these community meetings because now people are very difficult and rightfully so there was a contract signed between the two parties or the community members and then of course SCOM and then of course they couldn't keep their side of the deal later on and I think this caused a lot of rightfully so conflict in a way and I think for me that was quite an interesting time to be part of these meetings because just to also see how I think a national frustration for us is the way SCOM has been treating sort of people in the country and of course it's a state entity so it's way more complex than just making that statement but I think that you know there was definitely an intention and in the beginning definitely a engagement with the community and like I said very specific issues were raised and we're definitely dealt with in a professional way I think in giving the community their voice with regards to bottom up top down approach I mean for me it's more than just having meetings it's also whilst it installation happened I think there was maybe a bit of a lack of listening to maybe the level of technical expertise from the users which is a typical socio-technical thing that you find where I think some of the community members were just literally not educated enough or known enough about the system to actually use it the way they could and I think in that way I felt like there was quite a lack in proper communication, proper training maybe on that level and yeah I think that is just a snippet in the experience Very interesting thank you Sharnay and Valeria we're talking about utilities and how utilities are perceived so in a case like an L and an LX is it different when you try and build a community project from a utility perspective or does that make sense? Well I think that it's useful in a way that you can run some analysis as I mentioned on the correlation of consumption provides of your customer base so you can propose to kind of build a community project in a way that you can use in a way that you can run some analysis as I mentioned on the correlation of consumption provides of your customer base so you can propose to kind of come inside an energy community to a set of members that is in an optimized way so they can join in together with their own features and, you know, their own way or kind of, you know, their own way of consuming energy they can really match and cover the production of the PV so in this sense is a pro from my perspective at least to to run a community within a utility on the other way around is that, you know, probably is the same balance that Rina was mentioning regarding utilities and the revenue flows between the distribution, the utility, the energy service companies. So to me, if you run successfully an energy community, you have to keep this balance, energy balance but also financial balance and distribute the value. And distribute the value in a proper way within all the members. So it may happen sometimes that the utility company is not happy about the behavior of the energy community, or the distributor and so on. So you really need to set the business model according to the regulation and according to the expectation of every stakeholder from the household in a poverty, maybe situation up to the the biggest company. And you really have to be clear and set the expectation of what would be the benefits for all of them. I've seen a lot of questions regarding what means run successful run successfully energy community and and to me is really to to create this equilibrium within all the stakeholders involved. Thank you very much Valerio and Rina I might come back to you because we're touching there on the role of technology and particularly digital technology and you talked about the role of blockchain which obviously offers a lot of security in the transactions but I guess some people perceive it in different ways so how do you build trust around the role of digital technology and particularly blockchain in in a community project. Like you know when we were implementing the blockchain project in these different states that we have worked on. So, definitely like you know we we had to build a full consumer awareness or a community awareness program around before we could connect and get the trust for them to join us for this project. With this holistic, you know consumer awareness program that we had put together. We started with the initial survey connecting with the each of the, you know, community participants and identifying you know different them in categorizing them in different portfolios like you know resident like on the consumption type on the age group on the salary type etc. And, and then based on that and then identifying the right touch points where we can connect with them how to communicate what is the most effective method of communicating with them. So identifying the right communication strategy was the next step that we did and we did multiple like you know networking events to have like you know they're buying have the right like a point like you know we have residential working groups we have industrial community networks that we connected with to get them on board to have them join because you know they they're going to play a critical role. They, you know, in adoption of the technology or particularly blockchain which is absolutely a new buzzword for, you know, not only people who are in the past sector but for a consumer and then this involved. They are, you know, required their involvement on almost on a daily basis, initially you know to set the price and for them to like you know at what price they want to sell and the consumer coming on the platform, bidding for, you know, the amount they want to buy and who do they want to buy. So there was a huge involvement that was required from the committee or the consumer. So, you know, we had to do a very holistic detailed approach to get them on board get them understood to understand what all it takes and why they should participate what kind of benefits they're going to get. So, like, you know, otherwise this would not have been possible. Another example, when India was initiating the smart, like, you know, the smart metering program, I just I'm diverting from the blockchain roll out but even when we were rolling out the smart metering there was a lot of resistance. And at the pilot stage itself, we had incorporated this similar, you know, program to get the buy and get the people on board otherwise they were huge resistance to, and you know, myths around, it may increase my assumption and they, you know, it may not give a accurate consumption, and I may get, like, you know, they could be stealing it my house because they know what time I'm consuming and what time I'm not around. So there were a lot of things that needed to be, the myths needed to be busted before getting there. And like, you know, bringing local communities together for any kind of new technology intervention is the key, you know, with the examples that we have seen with the different technology interventions that we have done. So that has really worked very well. And I think that's the way forward for any kind of new technology implementation. Thank you very much, Rita. And thank you all. I think it's really interesting when we talk about trust, how much similarity there is in very different parts of the world with very different approaches that first of all trust is central but also the this interesting interplay of companies such as utilities and community organizations, bottom-up approaches, but also the role of policy, the role of technology, I think it's really interesting. And I think there's some of the key takeaways from today's webinar. So as we run out of time, friends, I just really again want to thank all of our speakers. I think it's been really fascinating. I really commend the work you're doing. I think it's really important, really inspiring for us all to hear. I want to thank all of you who joined us today for this discussion. I think it's been really interesting. And again, to stress, this is part of an ongoing series of events and discussions we at the IEA are facilitating. Very happy to hear from anybody joining us today. If you have experience to share on lessons you've learned and do please follow our website for news of upcoming events in this series, which will be coming soon. In some of the themes we've discussed today, we'll be discussing in just one month's time at the IEA's Global Energy Efficiency Conference taking place here in France, in Paris in early June. And we'll put a link to that event into the website if it's of interest to any of you, we'll put it into the chat just now so you can see and find out more details. And let me just thank Eduardo, Sharnay, Adela, Valerio and Rina. It's been great to have you all with us today. We really learned a lot from you. So I want to thank you all for your participation. Thanks everyone for joining us and we'll see you all again soon. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brian. Thank you.