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Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy

Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

  • Projects and activities | Last updated: 23 Jun 2021

COMETS (COllective action Models for the Energy Transition and Social innovation)

COMETS aims to enrich our scientific understanding of the incentives and aspirations of collective action initiatives (CAIs), its limitations, as well as its historical and future performance in the energy transition.

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Brief me

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COMETS (Collective Action Models for the Energy Transition and Social Innovation) is filling the knowledge gaps around citizen engagement in the energy transition to renewable sources by investigating and quantifying the aggregate contribution of Collective Action Initiatives (CAIs) in the energy sector at both national and European levels.

COMETS overall objective is to investigate Collective Action Initiatives (CAIs) as the main driver of Social Innovation in the energy sector.

The role of citizen-driven CAIs (e.g. energy communities, cooperatives, purchasing groups) and their contribution to the energy transition has neither been quantified at an aggregate level, nor has their contribution potential been estimated or understood in sufficient depth. COMETS aims to fill these knowledge gaps by quantifying the European-wide aggregate contribution of CAIs to the energy transition at national and European levels by investigating their evolution and scaling up at an in-depth level in six selected countries.

Two specific objectives derive from the overall objective:

  1. To build robust knowledge on social innovative processes in the energy transition as implemented by CAIs. COMETS will generate and test new knowledge about technical, institutional, economic, social and cultural factors that may facilitate or hinder sustained activities of CAIs. The project will provide new tools for the assessment of CAIs performance and will provide aggregate estimates of their current and potential contribution to the energy transition.
  2. To provide tools and recommendations for improving the start-up, steering, and up-scaling of CAI activities. COMETS will co-design the tools with practitioners, enabling changes in the current situation and generating blueprints for future initiatives.