Treating energy as a basic good

Welcome back to our Project Story series, where we share the latest news and successes from community energy groups across Europe.

Today we will be looking at Basque Country and Navarre, in the north of Spain, where our member GoiEner Taldea have been busy raising money for their new self-consumption projects.

Originally formed in 2012, the cooperative views electricity as a basic good in society and believes citizens should regain control by becoming aware of the importance of how energy is generated and distributed, promoting responsible and sustainable consumption of energy. Being a non-profit allows any raised income to be kept within the cooperative, with members themselves deciding how to allocate these funds during assemblies. Their stated final objective: the amount of renewable energy generated should be equivalent to the energy consumed by its members.

Their latest success has been to raise €400,000 in less than a month to finance the installation of 5 solar roofs located on 5 cooperative “ikastolas”, which are primary and secondary educational institutions where the language of instruction is Basque. Not only can these centres reduce their electricity bills through the use of self-consumption, but a new programme is being set up to educate teachers, students and families on the benefits of sustainability.

This new project will be operating under Nafarkoop, which is a services cooperative within GoiEner Taldea. The cooperative expects that the total surface area of 1800m2 that the panels will cover will generate 410MWh annually, which is approximately equivalent to the consumption of 160 homes. Not only that, but the reduction emissions is equivalent to what 13,120 trees would absorb per year.

We are very pleased to see our member doing so well and look forward to what's to come in the future.

GoiEner is an individual member of REScoop.eu along with being a member of the federation Unión Renovables.

If you would like to keep up with their work follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

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If you would like to keep up with their work follow them on Twitter and Facebook.