Pregrada
Crowdfunding
Energy
Enable openness and participation
The idea behind the project was to create a direct way for citizens to invest in infrastructure benefitting their own communities, to establish a regional crowdfunding platform specifically designed for financing energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in 2015.
The North-West Croatia Regional Energy Agency (REGEA) worked together with the Centre for Social Innovations and Sustainable Development (CEDIOR), which had previous experience in the field, technical expertise in the development of crowdfunding campaigns and web solutions for CF platforms, and it is working with the University of Zagreb in order to explore the potential for introducing the crowdlending model for fundraisers from the public sector.
The Croenergy.eu platform aims to provide various types of funding models without charging additional fees to project developers. The implementation strategy starts with a donation- and-reward based funding model, and develops by gradually adding crowdlending and crowdinvesting models. Campaigns are pre-selected, fundraisers’ background and the feasibility of the investment are checked by REGEA. After the evaluation, applicants are provided with guidance on how to develop promotional materials necessary to the presentation on the platform. The platform acts as a match-maker for lending funds to avoid potential financial risks.
The CF platform and the first pilot project received significant interest from the media and local supporters. One campaign was successfully completed: the pilot project in the City of Pregrada, which ended officially on 15th April 2016, raised the targeted funds of € 10.000 to complete the renovation of the “Naša radost” kindergarten, and paved the way for similar projects in Croatia.
The goal of this project was to make the kindergarten the most energy efficient in North-West Croatia. The energy investments involved the complete insulation of thermal envelope (including the roof), and the savings would be used for making new RES investments (solar collectors) and for developing educational programmes.
REGEA, city of Pregrada