Between Cuneo and Turin grow

In the front row are the provinces of Turin and Cuneo on the Energy Communities (Cer) front, realities instituted by legislative decrees 199 and 210 of 2021 and that promise to give a decisive boost to the model of self-production and self-consumption, with an important role that could also come from companies. The impetus comes from the publication by the Ministry of the Environment of the decree setting out the incentives for CERs, partly financed by Pnrr. Now it is up to the market, businesses, public administrations and private individuals to move quickly. There will be about a year's time - the Gse portal for CERs was opened on 8 April and will close on 31 March - to set up the Energy Communities and to define statutes and governance, an important issue for making the most of a tool that promises to accelerate decarbonisation, reduce energy costs for the productive fabric and the phenomenon of energy poverty in the territories.

Cer Concerti was set up on 9 April, just before the opening of the national call for tenders, in the province of Cuneo, with 24 municipalities and irrigation consortia adhering, under the Bealera Maestra Destra Stura Consortium. And it is experimenting in these weeks with an Iot-Ai digital platform for the management of the Energy Community itself. It will be able to count on 2 mw of hydroelectric, 50 mw of photovoltaic and 10 mw from biogas (wastewater). It is the latest in a series of initiatives that represent, in Piedmont's southernmost province, a real outpost for measures to support new models of self-production and self-consumption.

Also in the Cuneo area, the Fondazione Crc, in collaboration with Enviroment Park, has supported the creation of Energy Communities since 2020. "Our technology park is proud to have supported and promoted as a technical partner of Fondazione Crc the establishment of 11 new Cer on the territory of the Province of Cuneo," explains Giacomo Portas, president of Environment Park. "The excellent results obtained in this important project together with the daily work on technological innovation in the industrial sector confirm the strategic role of Envipark in the regional context in supporting the energy transition process of the territories. Stefano Dotta of Enviroment Park explains the characteristics of the collaboration: "We have been a technical partner and have followed the various initiatives carried out by the Foundation thanks to the three calls for proposals. In the first two calls for proposals there was a financial contribution, as a contribution to cover start-up costs, and in the second call, legal and administrative costs were also included, for example for the definition of the statutes. These were a series of initiatives, created under the transitional regulations, tailor-made for small communities. With the third call, a more robust initiative was launched, with an economic contribution alongside technical support managed by Envi Park. A dozen or so Cer have come into being as a result of this call, among them Cer Roero, to which some twenty municipalities belong. They join the dozen already set up over the past two years, for a total initial capacity of over 1.1 mw and the involvement of 93 founding members and a total of one million in available resources.

The CERTo project, implemented with the coordination of the Turin Chamber of Commerce and the technical-scientific support of the Energy Center of the Turin Polytechnic, the Links Foundation and the Univer Consortium, aims to define an experimental model of Renewable Energy Communities in the Turin area, "with the ambition of activating an aggregation process at the local level to benefit businesses and citizens, creating value through innovation in the way we produce, consume and manage energy," explain the Turin Chamber of Commerce. In a complex landscape, trade associations can intervene to aggregate the demand for electricity and collaborate in the coordination of urban renewal interventions, leveraging available surfaces in peripheral areas or disused industrial areas, for the installation of photovoltaic systems. Between April and May 2023, an initial mapping exercise was launched - 110 companies responded - to identify two Territorial Catalysing Contexts (Cocat), one in the urban area and the other in the metropolitan area. The choice fell on the territories belonging to the two primary Cocats 'Monterosa' and 'Canavese', with an initial expression of interest by 12 enterprises. Among the next steps, the development of a legal entity (Cet - Comunità Energetica del Territorio) destined to ensure the integrated management of CERTo. The Italian government has chosen CERTo as a national best practice to be presented in Dubai during Cop 28. The next step is the establishment of a Cer-zm (legal entity) or to choose the option of a temporary support on the already established Cer Concerts, the Recorsses Project, promoted by Environment Park and the Piedmont Region and dedicated to the territory of Valle d'Aosta, the Metropolitan City of Turin and the Province of Cuneo, and the Sinergie II call for proposals promoted by the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation.