About the Project

Project Introduction

The RECENT project aims to increase energy knowledge in rural communities, and help them to have more resilient and energy efficient public infrastructure capable of handling climate change related risks. The project will develop 24 pilot community energy and energy efficiency projects across 5 NPA partner countries, with focus on the innovative use of community-owned water assets.

RECENT aims to meet the demands of small NPA communities and leave a lasting legacy through tangible solutions and improved level of organisational knowledge. The target communities are small, remote, and face challenges to public infrastructure, such as competing uses for land and water, combined with climate change impacts.

RECENT will support communities to become more energy-self-sufficient by developing small-scale solutions and building synergy between critical public infrastructures. These solutions will include energy recovery from waste water (waste heat and biogas), co-digestion of sewage and biowaste, land-use of digestate and energy efficiency as well as a range of additional technologies appropriate to each region.

 

Project Objectives

To increase the capacity of communities to develop their own solutions for reliable, energy efficient public infrastructure;

• To maximise energy asset management in water services;
• Knowledge exchange programme leading to increased awareness and sustainable public policy;
• Robust, sustainable community projects that will be self-sufficient post NPA funding.

 

 Project Deliverables

• 24 pilot energy projects in 5 NPA countries;
• 6 of the pilots will demonstrate symbiotic solutions of energy use of by-products;
• Benchmarking pilot solutions to gain benefit from the transnational collaboration;
• Knowledge exchange programmes, with workshops, best practice guidelines and templates to improve the stock of organisational knowledge and have a positive impact on public policy.
• Contribution to policy and debate on sustainable community energy at regional, national and European levels through the development of a multi-level stakeholder group, interacting nationally and trans-nationally, with the RECENT partners who will act as the secretariat.
• An online learning portal