Empowering businesses to develop energy community models for a successful energy transition

Introduction

WESHARE supports the clean energy transition of European business parks, particularly complying with the scope B, by fostering energy collaborative approaches among companies. The consortium develops a full package of knowledge-based tools that provide insight into the energy collaboration potential of business parks.

Objectives

Unlocking the business parks' energy transition, partners develop an innovative and scalable co-operative set of solutions, enabling:

• The energy-communities' set-up
• Flexibility for making business areas less fossil-energy dependent
• Reduction of pollutants in terms of carbon emissions

Indirect Benefits

Indirect benefits include:

1. The possibility to embed and acknowledge institutional investors around complex and integrated renewable energy investments in business areas.
2. A contribution to the 2050 European strategy for climate neutrality, given the acceleration WESHARE gives to clean energy transition in business areas in Belgium, Spain, and Portugal.
3. The scaling and replication of the energy collaborative approaches across Europe.

Implementation

Through the testing and validation of peer learning modules in the three pilots (Belgium, Spain, and Portugal), WESHARE will engage business area stakeholders’ interests and mobilize almost €7 million of sustainable energy investments, reaching 5x after 5 years of project-end.

Expected Outcomes

Inside the project, the expected investments will result in:

• Renewable energy production of about 11 GWh/year
• Energy savings of 2.3 GWh/year
• CO2 emission reduction of about 2000 tCO2/year

After 5 years of project-end, WESHARE quantifies the full exploitation potential at more than 20 business areas, with:

• 5 GWh/year energy savings
• 64 GWh/year renewable energy production
• Less than 14,000 tCO2/year GHG emission reduction
• €38 million in sustainable energy investments