EnergyNeighbourhoods – EnergiaKözösségek

The EnergyNeighbourhoods programme helps citizens take action against climate change without any investment but by changing their everyday behaviour. Communities across Hungary have shown that by making simple lifestyle changes, citizens can achieve average energy savings between 7-10% and in some cases up to 25%. Through the EnergyNeighbourhoods programme, community members come together with green living experts and identify areas where they can save energy at home, in a measurable way without compromising on their quality of life in a 6 months long period.

Global problems, such as Climate Change, are in close relationship with the everyday life and consumption of households and this is why programmes like EnergyNeighbourhoods (EnergyCommunities) are extremely important, which support households to actively participate in finding solutions to these problems.

Gyula Bándi

Ombudsman for Future Generations in Hungary, patron of the EnergyNeighbourhoods programme

Our Story

Where/How did you first get the idea to start your energy community?

GreenDependent Institute (https://intezet.greendependent.org/en) had been working on several FP7 research projects in connection to changing energy use behavior of households and had already conducting household level energy saving action projects when an international consortium was looking for partners to create so called EnergyNeigbourhoods (EnergyCommunities) in Hungary in 2011 in the framework of an EU IEE (Intelligent Energy Europe) project.

What is your project about?

Small groups (of families, friends, colleagues, etc.) of households are formed (5-10 households in a group), and they compete for saving the largest amount of energy only through changing their behaviour and everyday consumption patterns. Each group is supported by a volunteer coordinator, so-called „Energy Master”, who supports the activities of the group, organise meetings and motivate their members.

These groups participate in a 6-month-long programme during which they try to reduce their energy consumption by at least 9% compared to the previous year and also perform different creative joint tasks.

GreenDependent provides trainings to Energy Masters, involving professional topics (energy use and savings at home) as well as group management and motivation. The small groups, or EnergyNeighbourhoods are supported by GreenDependent Institute who provides them with professional advice, brochures, saving tips and trainings held for the coordinators to achieve more efficient consumption reduction.

How did you convince others to join the energy community?

Recruitment is done in two phases, in the first one GreenDependent Institute looks for local coordinators, so called ‘Energy Masters’, people who are active in their community and have already been doing or are planning to do action projects locally, and who can involve and manage 5 to 8 households in an EnergyNeighbourhood. These Energy Masters first receive a series of trainings from GreenDependent’s experts, then – as the second phase – they form their own groups and oversee their actions for the 6 months of the programme, all the way supported by GreenDependent.

These small groups (of families, friends, colleagues, etc.) compete for saving the largest amount of energy only through changing their behaviour and everyday consumption patterns. The Energy Masters support activities of the groups, organize meetings and motivate their members.

What makes your energy community special? 

EnergyNeighbourhoods is special in several ways. Firstly, it is a programme for groups of households (so called ‘energy communities’ in Hungarian) and not only individuals or individual households, thus the supportive strength of the group is present and can be utilized throughout the project phase. Also its length is a specialty too, it runs for 5-6 months aiming at long term behavior change. All the development of the groups of households (i.e. energy use reduction) is compared to themselves and not any external factor.

What was your biggest success you already achieved through your project?

One of the biggest success of the project is winning the 2021 EU Sustainable Energy Award in the category of ‘Engagement’ – https://eusew.eu/awards2021-winners-finalists. Another big success is the more than 1000 participating households in the programme.