Promoting renewable energies - RETS Project

The RETS project grew out of a local initiative to
stimulate renewable energy take-up in Northern Alsace:
PEREN. The PEREN project ran from 2006 to 2010, and
included an innovative approach to clustering bringing
together more than 35 committed partners (companies,
farms, cooperatives, associations and local authorities),
aiming to encourage the emergence and
implementation of new projects and actions in
renewables on a local level. The Association ADEC was
a founding member of this project.
With its long experience in the creation and deployment
of information technologies, its key objective in PEREN
was to show how information technologies could be
put at the service of a sector such as renewable
energy. ADEC therefore set up a collaborative IT
platform that could monitor strategic and technological
developments in RES and detect, develop, implement
and support new renewable projects in the local area.
From 2008 ADEC was keen to carry PEREN forward
onto an European level and the idea of RETS was born.
Finding a framework, for this new project was not difficult
as the tools (good practice exchange, study visits,
seminars) available through the INTERREG IVC
interregional cooperation programme seemed the ideal
support. Indeed, the possibility of using an innovative
approach in the project, such as the RETS idea to
collaborate using web 2.0 technologies (a wiki and
competitive intelligence platform) was welcomed.
The INTERREG IVC programme encourages projects to
be made up of public authority partners. They are
supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the programme
and obviously if they are project partners they will gain
benefits. RETS however deliberately chose at the
beginning to have a mixed partnership bringing together
small local authorities, with recognised expert
partners from academia, research institutes, specialised
agencies and the third sector. Mixing the typology of
partners in the project has enormous advantages.
On the one hand, local authority partners, particularly
small ones, do not always have the capacity or internal
staff skills, the language skills (English is not always
mastered with ease) or the time to develop certain types
of project activities. Moreover, it is not necessarily a good
idea to ask them to carry out research style activities: it is
not their job.
On the other hand, experts in renewable energies or
specialists in economic development do have research
and technical skills. Not only do they guarantee the
scientific exactitude of the activities, they drive the
realisation of the deliverables and they are able to
process information to make it practical and
understandable for the local authority partners. Having
these expert partners directly involved, and not just as
subcontractors for specific activities, really helps the
project dynamic.
It is also important to note that as coordinator of RETS,
ADEC chose to put at the disposal of the project a
complete internal management team that goes over
and above the INTERREG recommendations in this area.
In addition to the dedicated project manager and financial
manager, RETS has a project coordinator with specific
skills and understanding in the project content
(renewable energies), a technical manager to give
support and manage the collaborative tools, and a
specialist in competitive intelligence. This structured
management team could be seen as one of the reasons
for RETS success in delivering the project objectives and
federating the partners.
RETS is also different, because the collaborative tools
are an integral part of the project: they help the project
partners, in particular the small local authorities, to
develop their renewable agenda because they are
participative and not passive such as an email. The
partners must connect to access information, and they
are encouraged to modify and develop the content.
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RETS Compendium – © 2012 RETS Consortium