On 15 and 16 October 2026, the REC-BRIDGE team came together at the Deggendorf Institute of Technology for the project’s kick-off meeting. Over the next two years, the project aims to make renewable energy communities easier to start, run and grow across Central Europe.
The challenge: too many borders
Renewable energy communities are one of the most practical ways to bring the energy transition home. Too often, though, they get stuck. Communities run into low awareness and trust, a lack of funding, tangled procedures and gaps in technical know-how. Good tools already exist, but they are spread across different projects and hard to find.
The idea: five projects, one toolkit
REC-BRIDGE doesn’t start from scratch. It brings together tested results from five Interreg projects: HERCULES-CE, JETforCE, V4Grid, TUNE and CO-ADRIA. These will become one integrated REC-BRIDGE Toolkit. Think of it as a roadmap for energy communities, covering everything from the first community meeting to monitoring results.
Real places, real tests
The toolkit will be tried out in pilot regions in Germany, Italy, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia. Some of these places have mature energy communities, and others are just getting started. If it works across that range, it can work almost anywhere. Training, peer-to-peer learning between regions and a roll-out strategy will keep the toolkit in use after the project ends. The final stop is a transnational conference in Brussels.