What is the "Sustainable Communities"?
This initiative will bring all different aspects of sustainable communities together to create a platform of information exchange in order to define the concept of sustainable communities in more detail and to foster the implementation of this concept in Europe and in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs).

ESC Forum

Conference on ESC

A comprehensive guide of key-success factors and compilation of success stories of Energy Sustainable Communities (ESCs) has been prepared by experts in the field of renewables. The outcomes of the key-actor discussion groups served as a basis for writing this guide. It informs about the technical, political and socio-economic aspects of ESC. More importantly its ambition is to be a guide for communities that are on their way of becoming an ESC.

The first chapter provides an overview of the concept of Sustainable Development and links the evolution of the concept (from the Rio Conference, to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg to today) with the ESC approach. It secondly provides information about the characteristics of ESC – there are several dimensions to ESC, i.e. the social and the environmental dimension, the economic and the technical dimensions, the political dimension etc. – the RES technologies, their application cost and their potential in Europe. The following technologies, which are renewable energy-based - solar electricity, wind power, geothermal energy, biomass, small hydropower and solar thermal - are presented in some detail in the guide.

The ESC concept can be implemented at different levels, i.e. municipalities, urban areas, regions, rural zones, industrial areas and islands. Experiences of actors who have already successfully implemented the ESC concept have been taken into account in the guide. You will find abstracts of successful ESC in chapter 1. In addition there is a compilation of success stories (i.e. presentation of 20 best practice case studies) at the back of the guide for additional information.

The benefits of becoming an ESC are extensive. Among them: energy independence, environmental, economic and social benefits such as job creation, CO2 reduction, etc. The guide stresses how important it is to disseminate information on the benefits. They play an important role in generating support for the action towards sustainable development.

General indicators of ESC (elements of ESC) can roughly be categorised into 10 sections. They deal with RES and the rational use of energy (RUE), among others. The (level of) RES and RUE development in a community, rural area, etc as well as the existent sustainable energy production in the community, rural area, etc. are among the most important elements of ESC because of obvious reasons. The use of sustainable energy, i.e. the use of RES, is indeed closely linked to the RUE since the objectives of sustainable energy development will only be fulfilled if both areas – RES and RUE - are exploited. Secondly, depending on the current state of energy production and the RES potential different paths have to be taken into consideration.

The second, third and fourth chapters deal with the technical, the political and the socio-economic aspects of ESC and are presented in short form on the web page of the web partner forum.

Finally the chapter Central and Eastern European Countries’ Characteristics analyses the obstacles for RES and RUE development in these countries. The chapter however puts emphasis on the positive results achieved so far not forgetting to also stress the replication potential in Central and Eastern Europe.

 

Partners involved:
EREC (co-ordinator)
O.Ö. Energiesparverband
Energy Centre Bratislava
Powys Energy Agency
INSULA
ARMINES
Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg
National Technical University of Athens (RENES)