Our Projects / Fast & Fair Renewables & Grids
Fast & Fair Renewables & Grids
What is the project about?
As a contribution to the Fast & Fair Renewables & Grids initiative, EYEN has developed a digital tool and procedure, designed to bridge the gap between youth, municipalities and energy communities in the pursuit of a faster and more fair energy transition.
This platform facilitates meaningful public engagement, ensuring that young voices are at the heart of renewable energy initiatives, energy communities and grid development projects. By providing structured guidance and a repository of best practices, Fast & Fair Renewables & Grids empowers local authorities to foster inclusive, effective, and transparent decision-making processes.
What are our origins?
The Fast & Fair Renewables & Grids framework stems from EYEN´s collaboration with ICLEI in 2024. ICLEI is the association for Local Governments for Sustainability. In such collaboration, EYEN and ICLEI developed European baseline principles for the framework. Our project is specifically built upon the First Principle: “Local Projects – Local Influence”, which asserts that early and meaningful engagement is a prerequisite for successful renewable deployment, and not an optional extra.
Why is our project relevant?
While young people are the primary stakeholder of the energy of the future, they remain largely invisible in local decision-making.
We understood at EYEN that youth is often not engaged when it comes to public consultation processes or calls to local action. Our aim is to guide youth through these processes and help them see the benefits that their participation can bring to our societies. We are providing them a direct communication line with municipalities and energy communities, and drive an energy transition that is faster and more fair by integrating a part of society that usually tends to stand aside.
Overall, we transform youth engagement from a superficial gesture into a structure, impactful collaboration, ensuring that the voices of the next generation are systematically integrated into the energy transition. This is the reason why our project was recognized by winning the European Climate Fund by E.On Foundation in 2025.
How does our project work, in practice?
EYEN’s project on Fast & Fair Renewables & Grids is developing a mapping tool that works via browser. This tool is portrayed as a portal, where municipalities and energy communities can submit their public consultations, calls to action and projects.
To do this, EYEN is also developing a process and a framework, to accompany municipalities and communities throughout the whole process, while making it as easy as possible.
This process will start with these municipalities and communities filling in a form in our website with more information on the project they would like to submit. This will be the only effort needed from their side because, from there on, our members will retrieve the information and posting their proposal in the tool for young people to see! Youth will then be able to interact with it by deciding to engage with the proposal.
Get involved!
Do you want to get involved? If you are a young person interested in energy (you do not need to have related studies, it could also be that you are interested in the energy transition overall), a professional working at a municipality or an energy community, we are looking for you!
We will be having a workshop in Leipzig on Thursday 17th of September 2026, where we will bring together youth, municipalities and energy communities; to discuss how the tool and the process being created by EYEN can bridge them, and understand the feedback from the future users.
If you want to attend the workshop, please register below.
Our Projects / Fast & Fair Renewables & Grids