The Department of Environment and Sustainability of the City Council of Tacoronte has promoted, with the support of the Office of Renewable Energies of the Sustainable Development and Fight against Climate Change area of the Cabildo de Tenerife, the creation of a local energy community by the citizens of the municipality, which was constituted on December 23, with the signing of 13 people united around the common goal of producing energy with renewable sources and acquiring control over the impact of energy consumption on the cost of their bills.
It is the first local energy community in Tenerife and the second in the Canary Islands, after the one created in March on La Palma. “The citizens of Tacoronte have been the real protagonists of a very interesting process, which has not ended, but which finds in the signing and registration of the constitution of this association a very significant milestone, in a deeply participatory and democratic process”, he highlights the Councilor for the Environment and Sustainability, Carmela Díaz Vilela.
In this sense, the mayor explains that “the creation of this energy community is generated from the bottom up; the City Council and the Office of Renewable Energies have limited ourselves to informing citizens, empowering them and facilitating the steps they have decided to take. In this way, the community is created first and the projects come later and are decided by the participants in the association ”.
A Local Energy Community (CEL) is a figure created by European legislation to provide citizens with tools that facilitate equal opportunities in the electricity market, both for the population and for SMEs and local administrations through generation, consumption and energy management with renewable sources and the active participation of users and entities.
Distinctive feature
In this regard, the mayor highlights another distinctive feature of this citizen initiative: its constitution as an energy community based on the formula of the association, instead of the cooperative.
“A cooperative can sell energy, it goes into business; an association does not sell; if there is excess energy, it is distributed among the associated people ”, explains Díaz Vilela.
