Greenfoot Programme

Together with Energy Institute at the Johannes Kepler University in Austria, EFDN is working on a new funding application within the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union.

The success of the European Energy Union and the transition to a more efficient, low-carbon energy system cannot be accomplished without active participation from a substantial portion of Europeans and financing for the myriad of necessary improvement projects. The central goal of GREENFOOT is to overcome these two hurdles by pack-ageing individual participation and financing of the energy transition in the fun, friendly, and well-known context that is European professional football. To accomplish this goal, GREENFOOT will develop and implement a community-based financing scheme for renovating football stadiums and related buildings (e.g. practice fields and team headquarters) with energy efficiency measures and photovoltaic (PV) panels.

GREENFOOT stands for GReen power and Energy Efficiency iNvestments community-Financed for football buildings and the goal of this project would be to develop a financing scheme for building renovations and PV installations that would make fan-based building renovations and PV installations a reality. The project would then test and demonstrate the applicability of this scheme so that it could be applied to many of the buildings of organisations that are associated with UEFA, EFDN, football, and other sports.

The GREENFOOT concept

To finance football building energy efciency renovations and PV installations through a crowd-funding scheme that propels Europeans to become active participants in the energy transition through their love of football.

Project Background and Benets

The term “community-finance” is most often used in the context of PV-financing schemes where many individuals contribute money to purchase a PV system. As the PV system produces and sells electricity the individuals receive either a rate of return on their investment or electricity usage offsets. An analogous scheme for energy efficiency called an “ESCo” (energy savings company), is where an outside entity funds energy-efficient renovations and receive a string of future payments in return.

These pre-existing financing schemes will be extended to football buildings in GREEN-FOOT through careful, yet simple additions to the schemes. In the case of PV, a solar array could be placed on a football building, and fans could be offered the opportunity to invest in this array, and earn interest off of its electricity production. In the case of ESCos, this project will use the existing ESCo business model to form a “community ESCo,” whereby community members and fans can invest small amounts in the renovation of a football building. Once the renovations have completed this investment will be paid back over time using the value of energy savings generated through the energy efficiency improvements.

The fans and community members gain an investment opportunity, the ability to participate in the energy transition, and the enjoyment of supporting their favourite football club or national team. The football entities accrue benets that may include cheap and available financing for building renovations and PV installations, decreases in electricity costs and revenues from PV power sales, green marketing/branding opportunities, achieving corporate social responsibility goals, and greater fan participation and loyalty due to feelings of inclusion.

We are looking for clubs, who are different in size and from all over Europe who have plans to renovate their stadium, Youth Academy or other club owned venue and who are looking into the opportunity to invest in Green power and energy solutions. If the application would be successful, participating clubs will receive support and funding to develop their own crowdfunding campaign to secure the funding for the Green investment in their facilities. In case you are interested, please let us know! The deadline to express your interest is 10 July 2018.