CLEAR-X - Consumers Leading the EU’s Energy Ambition Response, eXpansion

CLEAR-X - Consumers Leading the EU’s Energy Ambition Response, Expansion - is an ambitious extension of a tried-and tested methodology, designed and developed to address consumers’ needs. The overall objective is to enable consumers to lead the energy transition by investing in renewable energy and sustainable energy (RES) and energy efficient (EE) technologies. It aims to facilitate consumers’ access to household renewables at an affordable price, through the provision of trusted information, collective purchase schemes and an improved regulatory framework. By the conclusion of CLEAR-X, consumers will have improved the energy performance and comfort of their homes and reduced their energy bills in the long term. The CLEAR-X project will engage 38,000 consumers in collective purchase campaigns in 6 target countries and will trigger over 27M EUR in installations of RES technologies. The project is expected to result in an additional 40 GWh of renewable energy production and trigger 2.15 GWh of primary energy savings within the project duration. Furthermore, the project will help inform a significant number of consumers in the target countries about potential benefits of EE and RES technologies and influence an additional 17,000 consumers to act and save energy. Building on CLEAR (Intelligent Energy Europe) and CLEAR 2.0 (Horizon 2020), CLEAR-X will expand the proven collective purchase model, by engaging and supporting consumer organisations in Eastern and Southern Europe to launch schemes for their national consumers. Consumer organisations participating in CLEAR 2.0 developed considerable expertise in setting up and running collective purchase schemes and CLEAR-X will draw on this experience, both human and technological, to equip consumer organisations in the target countries with the necessary skills to run collective purchases.

Some concrete key performance indicators (KPIs) of the project include:
The project expects that 38,000 consumers will be reached through the organization of collective purchase campaigns, having already reached 5,792 consumers with the first three campaigns, as of 30 November 2022. The CLEAR-X consortium has also prepared communication and dissemination material to ensure the consumers are better informed on RES and EE technologies and are actively reaching out to consumers through different channels (TV, radio, printed/online articles, etc). The project expects that this will lead to a behavioral change and, consequently, to primary energy savings.The CLEAR-X project is contributing to policy and strategy developments to include sustainable energy issues at all governance levels. This is done by all the partners based on a set of recommendations developed by the Consortium following a review of legislation relevant to the project in 2021. Many partners were successful in establishing contacts and holding meetings or giving presentations to ministries of energy and other governmental departments. The Consortium’s advocacy activities already resulted in the adaptation of two funding schemes in Slovakia and allowed Cyprus Consumers Association to convince two PV panels suppliers and one air conditioner supplier to create interest-free payment schemes which would allow consumers to pay the price of the product back over time with no interest.

The project started in 2021 and will be completed in 2024.

Main beneficiaries: consumers, low income communities, and others.

It addressed the topics of: climate change, information and awareness, renewable energy, regulation, consumer needs, heating and cooling system.

The partners of the project are: BNAAC (Bulgaria), CCA (Cyprus), DECO PROTeste (Portugal), LCA (Lithuania), OPM (North Macedonia), SOS (Slovakia), ZPS (Slovenia), BEUC (Belgium), ICRT (United Kingdom).