North-East Regional Development Agency is a partner in a new consortium whose project, Social Innovation in Renewable Energies, received final approval on 16.02.2023. The actual start of its implementation began on 01.03.2023, and the duration of the project is 48 months.

SIreNERGY project is funded under the INTERREG Europe, Programme, Call 1, Policy Objective 2 – A greener Europe.

About the project:

The SIreNERGY project aims to improve regional and national policies by increasing the share of energy from renewable sources in rural areas to better inform local consumers, and empower self-consumers to generate, store, consume and sell renewable electricity without facing disproportionate burdens.

General and specific objectives:

  • Integrating energy strategies into local, regional and national economic development strategies to reflect local potential and needs.
  • Integrating renewable energy into larger supply chains in rural economies such as agriculture, forestry, traditional manufacturing and eco-tourism.
  • Ensuring socio-political acceptance by guaranteeing clear benefits of using renewable energy as the low-carbon alternative energy to local communities and engaging them in the design, financing or management process.
  • Increasing the involvement of energy consumers as active actors in the development of new renewable energy sources.

The success of the learning process requires a strong and direct commitment of the regions themselves and especially of the authorities responsible for implementing the policy instruments. For this reason, the learning process will be based on the exchange of experience between different regions and partners through two main steps:

  • Regional Diagnosis for the identification of gaps and improvements on renewable energies strategies deployment in rural areas;
  • Exchange of experiences to achieve a policy improvement. The best way to reach this objective will be based in the following steps: reporting of good practices, field visits to the partner regions to assess good practices, peer review sessions of good practices, improvements of policy instruments, stakeholder groups engagement.

Partnership:

  • Leartibai Foundation, Spain – Lead partner;
  • Basque Energy Agency, Spain;
  • Association for Environment and Safety in Aquitaine (APESA), France;
  • Regional Agency for Entrepreneurship and Innovations – Varna (RAPIV), Bulgaria;
  • Energy Agency Southern Sweden;
  • North-East Regional Development Agency, Romania;
  • Marshal’s Office of the Mazovian Voivodeship, Poland

Newsletter:
Newsletter no. 1 / august 2023