Power Up Eeklo

The city of Eeklo in Belgium works closely with local citizen-energy cooperatives to ensure access to affordable, local, renewable energy for its citizens. Since 2000 several wind turbines were developed on public grounds of the city by the citizen-energy cooperatives Ecopower and Volterra. This way over 500 households (5% of total households) in Eeklo became member of the cooperatives in the last 20 years. The average profile of these households are highly educated middle class families. As a city we want that our local energy is available for every citizen, especially households in energy poverty as they could benefit even more of lower energy prices from the cooperative Ecopower (that has a suppliers permit in Flanders). But becoming member of the cooperative means becoming shareholder by investing €250 euro in the cooperative, a financial barrier which makes membership out of reach for a lot of families in energy poverty. The city of Eeklo and Ecopower are setting up social energy shares to overcome this financial barrier. The social shares are shares of the cooperative that are pre-financed by the city and that can by used by lower income households. The households pay the value of the share (€250) spread over 6 years via their monthly advance invoice (€3.5 montly). They are full members of the cooperative from the start. We work closely with social services to identify households with difficulties to pay their energy bill and help them transfer to the cooperative supplier if they are interested. This way we try to make affordable, local, renewable energy accessible for every inhabitant of the city, regardless of their household budget.