Inspiring Examples and Best Practices
Coopérnico
Country: Portugal
Contact information:
- Rua De São Nicolau 73, 3º Drt
1100-548 Lisboa - (+351) 213 461 803
- coopernico@coopernico.org
- https://www.coopernico.org/
About
Coopérnico is a renewable energy cooperative that harnesses solar power for the benefit of the local community. It started with 16 citizens seeking the opportunity to invest their savings in renewable energy. The community now has more than 6000 members, that have invested over 2 million Euros.
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Mission
To promote citizen involvement in the creation of a new social, economic and environmental paradigm through the development of renewable and decentralized energy projects and the sharing of the benefits between investors, society and the planet.
Activities
Coopérnico is the first cooperative energy producer and supplier in Portugal. Citizens from all over the country can become members and purchase a share. These revenues are then used to finance RES investments including solar PV panels. So far, the cooperative has nearly 6900 clients.
The cooperative focuses on three main areas, renewable energy production, energy supply and energy efficiency. Through their projects, they seek to create social value through local collaborations and the sharing of revenues with organizations operating in the social economy.
One way that the cooperative works is that it rents the roofs of socially-orientated institutions for its PV projects, providing those institutions with extra income. At the end of the lease, the cooperative will offer solar equipment to the hosting institutions for free. The energy produced on these rooftops is fed into the grid and bought by the distributor.
Coopérnico can directly sell electricity to its members at a fair price, guaranteeing that the amount of electricity produced by Coopérnico’s projects is more than the one consumed by its members.
Some of the services Coopernico offers are investment opportunities in renewable energy projects, Community engagement actions, education, project support: development, financing, implementation, access to green energy (electricity commercialisation) and support and counselling for energy-vulnerable families.
In order to finance its renewable production projects, Coopernico created a crowdfunding platform open to members of the cooperative. The members are lending funds for the development and installation of solar PVs on roofs. members are getting 3% interest rates on their investments through the platform.
Distinctive Good Practice
Since Coopernico’s activities and beneficiaries are spread throughout Portugal, local groups were created to serve as the voice of Coopérnico in the community, in favor of a fair and democratic energy transition. The Local Groups are made up of Coopérnico members, who organize activities, such as workshops and information sessions about the cooperative, or ensure their presence in debate panels, information stands and other street events.
Barriers & How they were addressed
Coopérnico initially struggled to secure funding for their first installations as citizens didn’t trust the project yet and were hesitant to invest. REScoop.eu connected them with other like-minded energy cooperatives in Europe. Som Energia from Spain, Beauvent from Belgium, and Waterland from the Netherlands provided the capital and skills needed to kick off these first projects. Together they established a consortium in which Coopérnico had 17% of shares and could gradually buy back up to 100% as the cooperative´s member base and social capital would grow.
When people started seeing the PV panels on the roofs and revenues began to flow, the membership started growing rapidly. After less than two years, they had already returned all the borrowed capital.
Benefits to Participating individuals
All of the cooperative’s projects create social value through direct collaboration or by attributing part of the results obtained to social economy or educational organizations. Individuals and organizations can become members of the cooperative supporting its mission towards building a fairer more democratic renewable energy model and can make investments in Coopernico’s collective crowdlending in renewable energy projects. Both individuals and companies can also hire Coopernico’s services paying a fair, transparent non-profit price and purchasing 100% green energy.