…. are not uncommon, as we discovered in the RESTOR Hydro Map in our bi-annual project meeting organized by APER (Italy) in March 2013.
The RESTOR Hydro Map is growing step by step, thanks to partners’ efforts collecting data for the 27 EU Member States.
In parallel, many other European associations and an increasing number of volunteers are supporting the project providing data. This shows that RESTOR Hydro is a truly European collaborative effort.
Having identified potential sites for refurbishments throughout Europe, several municipalities and mills owners are eager to start refurbishment projects through the establishment of small and micro hydropower cooperatives.
To facilitate this process, RESTOR Hydro develops cooperative guidelines and a high level financial plan to set up such cooperatives. These documents are aimed at anyone with basic entrepreneurial skills willing to tap into a region’s microhydro potential.
Boundaries of how to define a cooperative may depend from project to project. The model chosen by the community must be suitable for the project purposes and up-to-date models of cooperatives can be also considered, once established that some basic criteria and principles are respected. In this respect, collaboration between RESTOR Hydro and the REScoop 20-20-20 project is foreseen, especially in Italy where contacts between partners of the 2 projects are ongoing.
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