About SOCIAREM
Solar Open Community Instruments for All Residents in Europe & the Mediterranean — a Horizon Europe project driving the solar energy transition through citizen empowerment and digital innovation.
Empowering communities through solar energy
SOCIAREM is a pilot project funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement Nº 101235482) and the Swiss Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI).
The project empowers citizens and communities by making renewable energy more accessible, understandable and participatory. Through digital tools, gamification and engagement strategies, SOCIAREM helps users make informed energy decisions and benefit from fairer community energy models.
SOCIAREM brings together 15 organisations from 8 countries — universities, research centres, innovative SMEs and social organisations — coordinated by Comillas Pontifical University in Spain.
Six pillars driving SOCIAREM's mission
Integrate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles into community engagement. Produce policy recommendations and regulatory guidelines to remove barriers to PV adoption and support fair participation.
Develop dissemination, communication, and exploitation strategies to ensure the project's results reach stakeholders, support scalability, enable commercialisation and remain accessible as open tools.
Establish secure blockchain-based solutions for peer-to-peer energy exchange, plus fair and transparent billing and settlement systems with equitable energy distribution mechanisms.
Deploy technological and social tools in four diverse Renewable Energy Communities (CH, CY, PT, IT) to demonstrate scalability, performance, user acceptance, and readiness for market uptake.
Create smart, modular, user-centric tools that improve efficiency, accessibility, and profitability of solar PV systems — including optimisation algorithms, planning tools, and network analysis instruments.
Use data-driven profiling, dynamic user interfaces, and a serious game to increase awareness, participation, and energy literacy among citizens, adapting content to diverse cultural contexts.
Project Work Packages
Seven interconnected work packages spanning the full project lifecycle, from research and tool development to real-world validation and dissemination.
Horizon Europe · Grant Nº 101235482
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement Nº 101235482 and the Swiss Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI) under contract Nº 25.00325.
Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA).