Belgium/"Courants de Gaume", sharing local, green and affordable electricity

"Courants de Gaume" is the name of a new non-profit organization and citizen energy community. Its aim is to share local renewable energy.

If you don't have photovoltaic panels but would like to benefit from locally-produced green electricity, the solution may be to join an energy community. In southern Luxembourg, the ASBL and citizen energy community "Courants de Gaume" has just been set up.

Spearheaded by the Parc naturel de Gaume and supported by the Energie commune association, this non-profit association aims to cover the communes of Chiny, Florenville, Tintigny, Etalle, Meix-devant-Virton, Rouvroy, Virton, Saint-Léger and Musson.

Its aim is to enable citizens, companies, institutions, municipalities, schools, youth movements, etc. to share locally-generated electricity among themselves. "A household or SME that has photovoltaic panels, for example, but doesn't consume all their production for their own needs, can join the citizen energy community to sell them this excess production at a favourable price. Other people, who don't have panels, can buy this local renewable energy at a good price too."

As this is an energy community, all full members have voting rights at the general meeting. And it's the members who will be able to decide with us at what price we're going to pay for electricity to self-producers who feed into the grid. So, we're really giving the right to decide back to the people," explains Jeroen Vyncke, Chairman of Courants de Gaume.

If you'd like to join this citizen energy community, find out more on the Courants de Gaume website.

Source: www.rtbf.be/