On Thursday 27 June, the Renewable Energy Community of Luino was officially established in the Municipality of Luino (CER of Luinese), thanks to the signature of the mayor of Luino Henry White and the CER manager of the National Association of Small Municipalities of Italy, Roberto Gregori.
The municipal secretary of the Municipality of Luino Carla Loved, authenticated the signatures and proceeded with the immediate registration of the Luinese CER with the Revenue Agency. The councilor participated in the founding act of the CER Giuseppe Cutri who made a great contribution to the establishment of the CER, e Gianfranco Malagola representing the Luino Climate Table.
What is an Energy Community?
«This is a very important result: establishing a Renewable Energy Community, with the important participation of the Municipality of Luino, means creating an innovative energy model to manage distributed energy production from the bottom up focusing on renewable sources – explain the promoters of the initiative – We remember that a Renewable Energy Community is a non-profit legal entity to which citizens, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), territorial bodies and local authorities can voluntarily join, including municipal administrations, research and training institutions, religious bodies, third sector bodies and environmental protection bodies in order to consume and share locally the electrical energy produced by renewable energy plants belonging to the members of the Community itself with the aim of providing environmental, economic and social benefits to its members and to the local areas in which the Community operates through widespread self-consumption of renewable energy. It means understanding what happens in our homes in terms of energy consumption, use of household appliances, energy dispersion and therefore greater attention and awareness on consumption using renewable sources».
The Luino Climate Table began studying Energy Communities as early as 2021, the year in which Legislative Decree no. was approved. 199 which implemented the Renewable Energy Directive (REDII), and included the creation of a Renewable Energy Community of the Luinese area in its Action Plan presented in 2022 to all the municipal administrations that signed the Climate Emergency Declaration.
Who can join
All users located in the low voltage electricity network under the same primary cabin can now join the CER of Luino (AT/MT). In our case the primary cabin is that of Creva di Luino (code AC001E01530) which supplies, in addition to the Municipality of Luino, also the Municipalities of Maccagno with Pino and Veddasca, Tronzano Lake Maggiore, Agra, Dumenza, Curiglia with Monteviasco, Germignaga, Brezzo di Bedero, Montegrino Valtravaglia, Brissago Valtravaglia, Porto Valtravaglia, Mesenzana, Castelveccana and Cremenaga; users who reside in all these municipalities can therefore join the Luinese CER.
The benefits
A Renewable Energy Community provides important benefits to its territory and in particular:
environmental benefits: CERs make a strong contribution to the production and sharing of energy from renewable sources, thus reducing emissions of climate-changing gases and improving the efficiency of the electricity grid thanks to self-consumption of energy;
economic benefits: by self-consuming the energy produced by your photovoltaic system you avoid drawing electricity from the grid, thus significantly reducing the cost of the bill issued by your vendor; a reduction of approximately 80% of the cost of the bill before installation can be estimated. Furthermore, on the energy shared with CER members, the GSE (Electricity Services Manager) recognizes an incentive tariff and a valorization contribution for 20 years. Also important is the non-repayable contribution equal to 40% of the eligible costs for the construction of new renewable energy systems located in municipalities with a population of less than 5,000 inhabitants;
social benefits: CERs promote the active participation of community members, the fight against energy poverty and technological innovation.
We have therefore reached an important stage in the energy transition in our territory; now we need to continue with the management of the Luinese Renewable Energy Community.
Anyone who wishes to receive further information you can write to the Secretariat of the Luino Climate Table at the address: [email protected]
