Many islands are engaged in energy transition; however most of them haven’t the expertise to concretely launch investments, access finance and kick start the projects. NESOI aims at filling this gap through a hands-on approach allowing to get the expected financial leverage towards the effective implementation of islands’ energy transition plans. Starting with a broad survey gathering EU islands’ needs, NESOI provides a platform where islands can access both indirect and direct support:

1. Provided through a tailor-made digital platform, the indirect support consists in training material, best case examples, toolkit for technical and economic best practices and a cooperative space for islands, investors and technology developers;
2. Based on transparent technical, social, economic and environmental criteria, NESOI selects projects for customised direct support from consortium experts and from external ones for local aspects thanks to a cascade mechanism.

NESOI supports projects at different stages of development, starting from early stage ones requiring a high-level technical & economic assistance, to more advanced ones asking for specific and detailed contributions on various fields (technical, legal, financial), putting forward a reality-check mindset, to make islands focus on solid projects with the potential to attract investors. NESOI implements capacity building and coaching activities to ensure raising awareness and capacity of public authorities’ staff for developing investible projects with the aim to empower Local Communities in a success pursuit of the energy transition. Broad communication activities at EU level and links with other initiatives like BRIDGE and the Cities Facility are also foreseen. NESOI partners are strongly connected to investors, island communities and the energy innovation ecosystem, and intend to develop a sustainable business model for NESOI platform.

• To develop a toolkit & methodologies to guide islands in structuring their energy transition plans from different perspectives (technological, legal, financial, business model, citizen engagement).
• To design and manage a digital platform allowing for recruiting candidate islands, sharing best practices, showcasing successful projects and innovative island-suited technologies.
• To define criteria enabling to select and prioritise islands for NESOI support.
• To offer physical platform expert resources to selected islands to support the structuring of executable energy transition projects.
• To manage a lean financial support scheme to allocate funds to selected islands for local and procedural support.
• To define a robust business model allowing for exploiting the NESOI facility after the EU-funding period and for replicating investment concepts.
• To provide coaching and capacity-building support to islands’ public authorities, in order to train and empower their staff to develop investible energy transition projects.
• To develop and implement a large-scale communication and dissemination plan to promote the facility at EU level and to cooperate with other EU-level initiatives.

On the one hand, CIRCE will lead Work Package 1 related to:

• The elaboration of toolkit and islands approach by developing the methodology for evaluating islands needs and requirements based on market research (desk and field) and co-creation activities (design thinking methodologies)
• The development of the methodology for the evaluation of the analysis and eligibility islands, which is paramount to fostering the transfer to and replication in different European regions.

On the other hand, CIRCE will also contribute to provide flexible and customised onsite technical assistance (TA) European islands in order to support them in structuring executable energy transition plans and investments. Moreover, CIRCE will participate providing coaching and capacity-building support to islands’ public authorities, in order to make their staff skilled to develop investible energy transition projects. Finally, in collaboration with the rest of partners, CIRCE will participate in the risk assessment, dissemination and exploitation of the results achieved too.