The Diputació de Barcelona will allocate 1.3 million euros to create new energy communities in the province and will do so through the new Oficina d'Impuls de Comunitas Energetices of the Diputació de Barcelona, a service that will accompany the local bodies of the province in the entire process of creating new communities. The project plans to advise a hundred educational centers in the province and a catalog of workshops, resources, technical seminars and training courses.

The new office will inform the councils about the financial aid available, support them in submitting applications and advise them in the drafting of ordinances. It will also provide local bodies with informative and training resources so that residents know what energy communities are, the local benefit they bring and the role of citizens in the transition towards energy decarbonisation.

Energy communities, one of the backbones of the energy transition

The forecast is that with this program, which will run until September 2025, 1,400 advisory actions will be carried out to local bodies, fifty energy communities will be created and 450,000 inhabitants of the province will be indirectly supported. The project starts from the basis of citizenship as a central element of the energy transformation. According to the creators, the energy communities must be one of the backbones of the energy transition, due to their contribution in kilowatts, due to their proximity, but above all because they will be a key piece for the democratization of energy. They highlighted a more than El Prat has always been a reference city in sustainability and in recent years they have established the foundations for the Prat of the future to also be a reference point for the just ecological transition. In this sense, they have promoted two pioneering initiatives: the House of Energy, an energy advice space, which has already helped thousands of homes and businesses in the city to lower their bills, and El Prat energy, a community energy that brings together agents from all over the city to share with homes and businesses the clean, local and economic energy that they generate on the roofs of the city. Another of the projects that the Prat de Llobregat will promote is the installation of a large photovoltaic pergola for the local energy community and for the company Aigües del Prat, which has a subsidy of 1.5 million euros. Objectives for sustainable developmentThe Energy Community Promotion Office of the Provincial Council of Barcelona has a budget of 1,365,000 euros, 498,225 euros of which are subsidized by the Institute for Diversification and Energy Saving (IDAE) of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. The financial aid is part of the first call for aid to community transformation offices for the promotion and dynamism of energy communities, within the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan for the execution of the Next Generation EU funds .This action by the Provincial Council of Barcelona responds to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) numbers 7 'Clean and affordable energy', 11 'Sustainable cities and communities' and 13 'Climate action'. The 17 SDGs were proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 25, 2015 and are part of the global agenda for 2030. The Diputació de Barcelona undertakes compliance and deploys action to support governments premises of the province according to these ODS.