RURAL_SEC and Pilot Area
During its first year of activity, RADAR partnership focussed on a local and on an international level, in order to mobilize the local energy actors in the pilot areas defined within the project, in order to increase energy efficiency through the development of future Agro-Energetic Chains in each pilot area.
The Rural Sustainable Energy Communities are the most important actors of the project, being the beneficiaries of the project results, but directly acting as advisory boards in the project activities.
The Members of the R_SEC in each pilot area are local administrators, local energy actors, local stakeholders, who signed the “Declaration of Intent for the European Rural Communities” engaging themselves in being active actors of the project.
The Rural SECs contribution consists of a close examination of the intermediate and final project results by means of focus groups during which the members of the SEC give their advice on the project activities implementation and obtained results and suggest any corrections which are to be made.
Moreover, each partner realized a description of the Pilot Area, and a maps database containing the most important information on energy consumption and biomass availability (both available on the project website, www.radarproject.eu), which have been the basis for the Definition of Agro-Energetic Models.
Each partner created different models of Agro-Energetic Chains for the concerned Pilot Area, that have been evaluated by the Rural SEC members trough focus groups, taking into consideration the vocation of every Pilot Area. Italy, United Kingdom, Latvia, Swedish, and Bulgaria have realized the public presentation of the definitive model to the Communities.
On an international level, the B_SEC Members (Board of the R_SEC, composed of 4 Members of each SEC) of each pilot area took part to a Study Visit in England organized by the English partner MEA.
The results have been evaluated through questionnaires submitted to the participants after the study visit and collected by MEA, and through a score card for the collection of the ideas learned.
All the documents have been summarized in the “Report on grown skills and competences on RES and RUE”, available on the RADAR project website.
The B_SECs have been also invited to take part to two videoconferences with the partners members in order to have the possibilities to share with other European local actors experiences and good practices in energy field.
