A Support Office to create municipal Energy Communities in Barcelona Province

The Barcelona Provincial Council is pushing towards a model based on renewable, local and shared energies. For this reason, it is promoting the energy transition in municipalities
In this framework, the Province decided to create the Office for the Promotion of Energy Communities (OICE) in 2024. The Office is a technical and strategic support service with which they support city councils and citizens to create and consolidate local energy communities. The office, which currently supports around 80 energy community projects, offers advice, tools and knowledge to facilitate collective renewable energy projects, placing people at the centre of the energy system.

Tailor-made support and open-access tools

OICE support is tailor-made for the needs of each municipality, offering from dissemination and capacity-building activities to tendering the PV installations, the Energy community management and app or even to fund part of the initial PV installation of the energy communities.
In particular, the Office supports the creation of two different types of energy communities:

•  Energy communities in the legal form of cooperatives, where the municipality plays the role of facilitator, providing municipal roofs and helping with the dissemination activities.
• Energy communities where it’s the municipality who produces energy and shared it with its citizens.

As complementary activity, the office also made public tools to support the creation of solar-based energy communities, including:

• PV potential maps
• Guides of how municipalities can participate in energy communities
• Spreadsheets to calculate revenues, feasibility, cost of the energy shares, etc..
• Tenders to set up the community
• Communication tools

While for the Barcelona provincial Council fighting against energy poverty should not rely exclusively on energy communities, they can be part of the solution. For this reason, the Support Office has helped energy communities to design protocols to include the energy poverty axe in their mission and everyday operations. As an example, La Tonenca energy community - in the municipality of Tona - is a pioneering initiative that is committed to community energy, fair and inclusive.

The energy community integrates vulnerable families through a structured, dignified, and participatory process. Families are identified and supported in coordination with municipal social services, ensuring aid reaches those genuinely affected by energy vulnerability while avoiding public stigmatization. Access barriers are removed through a shared photovoltaic self-consumption system that provides local renewable energy with no upfront cost or financial contribution required. This way, the energy community not only reduces households’ energy bills, but also promotes empowerment and active participation, while safeguarding dignity and avoiding stigmatization. It is presented as a replicable model for building a more equitable, cohesive, and community-driven energy system. 

Exceeding expectations by going even further

Up today, around 80 Energy Communities have been or are being supported by OICE, allowing municipalities to fulfil the the Climate targets set in their Action Plans, while supporting a fairer energy transition among its citizenship and reducing their own energy bill and the one from their citizens.

While this would be a huge success on its own, the initial target of the office was 50, demonstrating the usefulness of the the initiative. Additionally, the dissemination and capacity-building activities has involved more than 4.000 people in different municipalities, further showing the reach of the initiative, as well as the interest of citizenship in citizen energy projects.

But, beyond the numbers, the biggest result of the Office was successfully creating business models, guidelines, datasheet models allowing energy communities from Catalonia and Spain to easily become a reality.

Besides the technical support provided by OICE, since 2021 Barcelona Provincial Council has launched a funding program called Renovables 2030 to fund energy transition projects. In the last 2 years this program has contributed to the Energy community’s development by funding 30M€ in Shared PV on municipal roofs dedicated to energy communities.

Political will alone is not enough

As the OICE focuses on involving municipalities in energy communities, the involvement of their legal and accounting departments is essential. However, since in 2024 the legal framework did not explicitly included municipalities as actors, the task was hard. 

Indeed, until March 2026, energy transition was not a local competence by law, as it wasn’t to be part of an energy community. It meant that it was an extra competence and the legal requirements to advance on these topics were hard. Now, a new law (Real Decreto Ley 7/2026) has put energy transition as a municipal competence (as it already was for waste management, water sanitation, etc. ).

For this reason, political will was not enough, and constant dialogue with legal and accounting staff was necessary to try to convince them. However, the first supports provided were not successful due to the complexity of the framework.
Now, with the new legal instruments that the Catalan and the Spanish governments have put in place, the legal framework for the involvement of municipalities in energy communities is much clearer, but these two departments are still involved in the process since the beginning to improve the outcome.

Facing economic restraints and changing regulations

While the legal framework is now clearer, energy prices are a problem. Indeed, energy prices during day are at the lowest ever. So, it’s very difficult to have the economic argument for the participants on the side of the energy community.  However, this challenge has been overcame with the introduction of batteries. Indeed, allowing PV-produced energy to be consumed during non-solar hours show the economic potential of energy communities.

Moreover, there is legal uncertainty regarding the possibility to install PV on municipal roofs for energy communities. However, since the law now classify energy communities as public interest, the process is easier. Now, the Office is training legal and accountable staff of the municipalities on how to implement this new regulation. Actually, this new regulation changes completely the rules because energy transition becomes a obligatory competence of the municipalities. 

This obligation brings also risks for municipalities, as some of them could face problems on court if citizens feel they are not acting towards energy transition. In this aspect, the role of a second level local authority as the Barcelona Province is crucial, in order to help its municipalities to implement this new law.

Replication Potential

The Office for the Promotion of Energy Communities demonstrated its full potential, as it was able to support all kind of municipalities in its area, from big cities to small villages.

As energy communities are still recent in Spain, and municipal staff not ready to implement them, the Office is central in providing resources and training, and can be easily replicated in other contexts.

Office for the Promotion of Energy Communities 

Covenant Figures

Covenant of Mayors Coordinator since 2008

• 311 municipalities in the province
• 286 Covenant signatories with an approved SECAP, covering 5.980.340 inhabitants

Related link

• Website of the Office 
• Provincial project to support municipal energy transition