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Nowadays, there is a wide scientific consensus about the unsustainability of the current energy system and at the same time, social awareness about climate change and the IPCC&rsquo ; s goals is increasing in Europe. Amongst the different pathways towards them, one alternative is the radical transition to a democratic low-carbon energy system where the local scale has a key leading role. Under this scope, this research is framed within the mPOWER project, financed by the European Commission&rsquo ; s H2020 programme, which promotes collaboration among different European municipalities in order to boost the transition to a renewable-based participatory energy system. This paper presents the starting point of the mPOWER project, where the main energy features of 27 selected European municipalities are collected and analysed for the year 2016. An open public tender and selection process was carried out among European cities in order to choose the candidates to participate in mPOWER project. A view of this situation will be taken by the mPOWER project as a diagnostic baseline for the following steps: a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing process among these European municipalities, and subsequently, among a more extensive group. The first finding of the paper is that, even if those municipalities are trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, they are highly dependent on fossil fuels, even in cases where renewable energies have significant presence. Second, their energy consumption is logarithmically related to the human development index and gross domestic product but not to the size of the cities and their climate characteristics. Finally, despite the work that these cities are making towards energy transition in general and within the mPOWER project in particular, the paper shows a high difficulty mapping their energy systems. The lack of accurate and unified data by the municipalities is a sign of disempowerment at a local and public level in the energy sphere and makes difficult any strategy to advance towards a bottom-up energy transition. Among other goals, the mPOWER project aims to reveal these kinds of difficulties and help local authorities in managing their transition paths.

Producción Científica ; Renewable Energy Sources (RES) offer a key transformative potential from a social point of view due to their modularity and capacity to generate energy at local level, allowing for the development of democratic and participative bottom-up initiatives. Spanish RES cooperatives, unlike other European countries, are few in number. Here, we review their development by applying the Multi-Level Perspective approach. Spanish RES cooperatives have recently come up against a hostile regulatory and economic context, which has induced specific organizational and operating structures such as the application of innovative participation methods and investment tools. Spanish RES cooperatives regularly collaborate in sharing learning processes and experiences, having also demonstrated their capacity to spread new ideas at both social and political levels. However, despite their growth and territorial spread over the last few years, RES cooperatives still have a minor presence in the Spanish energy system. Although some internal factors may limit their potential as an active instrument towards the transition to RES in the country, the regime's resistance is found to be the main barrier. This paper concludes with some recommendations for policy makers and RES cooperatives to enhance its potential role in the forthcoming energy transition process. ; Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project FJCI-2016–28833) ; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 691287

Achieving the ambitious targets set by Europe in its 2050 roadmap, moving away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources, while reducing carbon emissions, will require a radical change in Europe's energy system. Much of the action that will enable this energy transition to be realised in a democratic way is at the local level. It is at this level that many of the decisions regarding the energy transition desired by European citizens will have to be taken. The methodology used in this study is based on data collection, literature review, data validation and analysis. A part of this analysis will also be taken by the mPower project as a diagnostic baseline. The first finding of this research work is that energy transition data availability at the local level is quite low. Second, the local authorities are experiencing difficulties in decarbonising their energy consumption. Finally, the factor with highest positive relationships with other energy transition variables is the number of people employed in the field of energy transition. The results suggest that in order to lead a participatory energy transition, the workforce specifically dedicated to energy transition is a key factor, clearly differentiating it from staff working on the general energy field.

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Solar Heating and Cooling for Buildings and Industry (SHC 2015) ; Within the framework of IEA SHC Task 42 / ECES Annex 29, a simple tool for the economic evaluation of thermal energy storages has been developed and tested on various existing storages. On that account, the storage capacity costs (costs per installed storage capacity) of thermal energy storages have been evaluated via a Top-down and a Bottom-up approach. The Top-down approach follows the assumption that the costs of energy supplied by the storage should not exceed the costs of energy from the market. The maximum acceptable storage capacity costs depend on the interest rate assigned to the capital costs, the intended payback period of the user class (e.g. industry or building), the reference energy costs, and the annual number of storage cycles. The Bottom-up approach focuses on the realised storage capacity costs of existing storages. The economic evaluation via Top-down and Bottom-up approach is a valuable tool to make a rough estimate of the economic viability of an energy storage for a specific application. An important finding is that the annual number of storage cycles has the largest influence on the cost effectiveness. At present and with respect to the investigated storages, seasonal heat storage is only economical via large sensible hot water storages. Contrary, if the annual number of storage cycles is sufficiently high, all thermal energy storage technologies can become competitive. ; This study is part of IEA SHC Task 42 / ECES Annex 29 "Compact Thermal Energy Storage - Material Development and System Integration" (http://task42.iea-shc.org). The work of ZAE Bayern is part of the project PC-Cools_V and supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy under the project code 03ESP138A. University of Zaragoza thanks the Spanish Government for the funding of their work under the projects ENE2008-06687-C02-02, ENE2011-28269-C03-01 and ENE2014-57262-R. University of Lleida would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group (2014 SGR 123). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° PIRSES-GA-2013-610692 (INNOSTORAGE) and European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovationprogramme under grant agreement No 657466 (INPATH-TES). Laia Miró would like to thank the Spanish Government for her research fellowship (BES-2012-051861). The University of the Basque Country acknowledges the financial support of the Spanish's Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the MicroTES (ENE2012- 38633) research project. The responsibility for the content of this publication is with the authors