Renewable Energies Transfer System
The ”RETS: Renewable Energies Transfer System” project has grown up out of a local experience of economic development through renewable energies (RES) in Northern Alsace (France).

The project aims to tackle the challenges of renewable energies for local and regional authorities (and in particular those with less than 25,000 inhabitants) in association with the expertise of existing competency centres that produce research and provide services on RES. These small sized authorities have to combat issues linked to their territorial competitiveness and access to project management skills for the implementation of complex projects (energy–mix).

The main objective of RETS is to improve the knowledge and competencies of local and regional policymakers (decision makers, civil servants …) in renewable energies, so as to facilitate the deployment of coherent and value added strategic renewable energies policies. This will be realised through the creation of a European community for local
authorities on RES, comprised of two key elements: physical tools for meeting and exchanging viewpoints and a virtual platform for collaborative exchange and transfer of good practice through an innovative online approach.

The RETS partnership counts 12 partners from 9 EU Member States: France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, UK, the Netherlands, Romania, and Slovenia. It has been developed with the idea of obtaining partners with different types and levels of experiences in the deployment of RES and sustainable management. The panel contains local authorities, universities, energy agencies and associations, more or less advanced in their policy and experiences.

The core RETS activities concern the creation of simple usable tools for local authorities in order to help them make informed choices for the implementation of the right renewable energy strategy within their territories: 
- Collection and analysis of regional RES initiatives and production of a good practice guidebook
(45 good practices collected and 20 transferred)
- Study visits (6) to exchange on ideas and practices between network members
- Tailored RES seminars for local authorities (10 seminars) to transfer knowledge, good practices and stimulate policy implementation
- Creation of an online RES community bringing together local authorities and RES experts on a collaborative tool, allowing them to find, exchange, discuss and transfer information on RES in an innovative way (publication of 25 articles on the web portal). 
- Dissemination of the results using both traditional (3 conferences, paper publications (leaflet, brochure), 10 newsletters, press releases) and new forms of communication (website, online collaborative tool).

The immediate project result is expected within the members of the consortium and their regional local authority network contacts. RETS will then rapidly have a wider reach through the diffusion of its good practices and knowledge via the RETS web portal and guidebook.