CER Parma 2030 Foundation established to promote energy communities in the city of Parma - NEWS

CER Parma 2030 Foundation established to promote energy communities in the city of Parma

The CER Parma 2030 Foundation has been established in Parma, a new entity that aims to manage and promote energy communities in the city and actively contribute to the goals of the City Climate Contract that the City of Parma signed with the European Commission, committing to pursue carbon neutrality in the territory by 2030.

The Foundation is the brainchild of a shared idea between the City of Parma, the National Research Council (CNR), the University of Parma and the AUSL of Parma.

Energy communities are a form of voluntary aggregation between citizens, businesses, public agencies and other social organizations, who cooperate to exchange energy generated from renewable sources with each other. If, for example, the surplus energy generated by a photovoltaic system of one of the members of the community is consumed by another member at the same time it is generated, the energy community is rewarded by an incentive that can be invested to further increase energy independence or to promote initiatives with a social purpose with spillover effects on the territory.

The CER Parma 2030 Foundation aims to promote the emergence of and support new energy communities in the area, offering technical and administrative support and promoting new projects and information, awareness and training initiatives.

CNR and University of Parma are among the founding members of the Foundation and play a key role in its activities, as bearers of high-level scientific and technological expertise in the field of energy.

Within the Foundation will also fit the Energy Community of the Parma Campus (CER Campus), whose members, CNR and the University of Parma, will share the energy produced by the approximately 700kWp photovoltaic plant, entirely financed by the CNR, that will be built at the headquarters of the Institute of Materials for Electronics and Magnetism (CNR-IMEM), within the Campus.

The CER Campus will be a true pilot project of the Foundation in that all funds from the incentives will be allocated to research and innovation projects and citizen science experiments with the concrete goal of making energy communities an effective and affordable tool for everyone.

The projects will involve experimenting with new solutions to monitor and maximize energy exchange among members of a community by acting not only on the level of new technologies but also on the co-creation and diffusion of new habits in energy use and management.

The CER Parma 2030 Foundation intends to be a point of reference for all actors interested in participating in energy communities, both at the institutional and operational levels.