A citizen-led renewable energy community based in Rijeka, Croatia — pioneering cooperative energy production, intelligent sharing, and community empowerment across the Adriatic region.
Co-funded by the European Union · LIFE Clean Energy Transition Sub-programme 2021–2027 · Duration: 2024–2026
The Energy Community of the Northern Adriatic (EZSJ) is a non-profit civic association dedicated to the production, sharing and smart consumption of renewable energy. We unite households, small businesses and enthusiasts across the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County under a shared vision: energy self-sufficiency for our citizens and our region.
Our community is headquartered at the Community Centre Drenova in Rijeka, where civic initiative, digital innovation and clean energy converge. We believe that energy transition is not only a technical challenge but a social and democratic one — and that citizens must be at its centre.
Empowering citizens to produce, share and intelligently consume renewable energy — contributing to financial resilience, climate protection, and a fairer energy system for all.
From our earliest days, citizen education has been the cornerstone of our work. We recognise that sustainable energy communities can only thrive when people understand the technology, the economics, and their rights. Our educational programme — delivered through workshops, public events, and digital platforms — targets residents, local businesses, and public institutions across the Primorje-Gorski Kotar region.
Regular hands-on workshops on photovoltaic systems, battery storage, energy monitoring and cooperative models. Events are hosted at Community Centre Drenova and partner venues across the region.
The platform energija.bezgranica.hr serves as a hub for guides, news, data dashboards and educational resources in Croatian and English — making expert knowledge accessible to every citizen.
Live energy production and consumption measurements from member installations are published openly, enabling citizens to understand and trust the system they are part of.
We engage public administrations, utility companies, distribution system operators and municipal authorities, building understanding and advocacy capacity at every level.
We educate members about their rights as prosumers under Croatian and EU law, ensuring communities can navigate regulatory requirements and challenge unfair interpretations.
Under the LIFE DISCOVER project we participate in developing and delivering standardised educational materials for energy communities, contributing to a replicable model across EU member states.
EZSJ does not only adapt to the regulatory environment — it actively seeks to improve it. From the outset we encountered Croatia's highly restrictive legislative framework for energy sharing. Rather than accepting these barriers, our team engaged in sustained expert advocacy: publishing analytical articles, contributing to public consultations, and working directly with regulators to promote legislation that genuinely enables citizen-led energy.
Our documented efforts include critical analysis of the Distribution System Operator's (HEP ODS) compliance with RED II obligations, examination of the economic conditions for renewable investment, and proposals for improving the legal framework for energy sharing communities in Croatia. This work has contributed to greater regulatory transparency and is referenced in national policy discussions.
Through the energija.bezgranica.hr portal and direct outreach, our expert publications reach citizens, policymakers, and professionals across the region, establishing EZSJ as a credible voice in Croatia's energy transition debate.
EZSJ is an active partner in the LIFE DISCOVER project (2024–2026), co-funded by the European Union's LIFE Clean Energy Transition Sub-programme. The project, led by Udruga Bez granica, aims to create a comprehensive support framework for Citizen Energy Partnerships (CEPs) across Europe.
We participate both as a living pilot community — providing real production and consumption data — and as an active partner in the design and development of digital tools to support energy community management at scale. Our practical experience on the ground directly informs the tools being built for replication across EU member states.
A real-time energy community management platform integrating live production and consumption data, weather forecasts (Open-Meteo API), and a MariaDB backend for optimal energy distribution and sharing simulation.
A comprehensive digital workflow application (HR-01 through HR-31) guiding citizens and organisations through the full legal and technical process of establishing a certified energy community in Croatia.
A modular Streamlit-based analytics platform for tracking community KPIs, participant data, energy performance indicators and DISCOVER project outcomes — deployed via Cloudflare Tunnel with full security practices.
A modernised collaborative knowledge-sharing platform (evolved from Excel/VBA to Python/Streamlit) enabling partner organisations to exchange data, methodologies and lessons learned across the DISCOVER consortium.
One of the most significant technical contributions emerging from EZSJ's partnership in the LIFE DISCOVER project is ECAS — Energy Community Administration Support: a purpose-built software platform that automates the entire billing and energy-sharing calculation process for citizen energy communities. Developed collaboratively over an intensive period by the EZSJ and Bez granica technical team, ECAS represents a state-of-the-art response to one of the most pressing operational challenges facing energy communities across Europe: the complexity of automated, transparent, and legally compliant energy accounting.
Energy sharing within a community is not simply a matter of technology — it is a complex administrative and accounting process. Each billing cycle requires processing large volumes of metering data for every member, applying sharing keys that determine individual allocations, calculating costs and benefits at both the individual and community level, generating legally compliant invoices, and maintaining a full archive of historical settlements. Performing these steps manually is error-prone, difficult to scale, and creates an administrative burden that undermines the viability of community energy models. ECAS was built to eliminate this bottleneck entirely.
ECAS was designed in full alignment with the applicable European and Croatian legislative framework, including Directive (EU) 2019/944 on the internal electricity market, the RED II and RED III renewable energy directives, and the Croatian Law on the Electricity Market and its associated secondary legislation. A key design principle is the recognition that shared energy within an energy community is not treated as a standard commercial electricity sale, but as a specific form of benefit distribution among members — with direct implications for billing methodology, invoicing structure, and taxation.
ECAS is built around a clearly structured, three-tier user model that mirrors real-world operational responsibilities within an energy community:
The system-level administrator with full oversight of all energy communities using the platform. Responsible for global calculation parameters, billing methodology consistency, sharing key management, and VAT/fee configuration. Typically the platform operator or technical service provider.
The administrator of an individual energy community. Manages member registration and activation, community data, internal pricing, and has full access to the billing archive for their community. Serves as the operational interface between the platform and community members.
An individual member of the energy community — household or business, active producer or passive consumer. Has secure read-only access to their own data, shared energy allocations, and the ability to download their generated invoices and billing statements.
Full automation of the sharing calculation cycle: intake of metering data (delivered energy Ei and consumed energy Ep per member), application of configurable sharing keys, and computation of shared energy allocations — with guaranteed repeatability and auditability.
Flexible configuration of sharing keys — the algorithms that determine how available shared energy is allocated among community members. Keys can be based on historical consumption, agreed ratios, or optimisation logic, and must be transparent and uniformly applicable to all members.
Automatic generation of structured invoices for both active members (producers who share surplus energy) and passive members (consumers who receive shared energy). Invoices clearly display shared energy volumes, internal community pricing, applicable charges, and the financial benefit of participation — including comparison with non-community consumption scenarios.
Interactive visualisation of energy production and consumption data per community and per member, enabling administrators and members to monitor performance and understand their position within the sharing ecosystem in real time.
Structured import of metering data via standardised Excel files from the distribution system operator, streamlining the data intake process and reducing manual data handling errors.
Full billing archive accessible to both administrators and members, enabling retrieval and download of past settlements, invoices, and energy accounting records for any billing period.
Having laid the legal, technical and community foundations, EZSJ now looks to scale its impact — deepening member engagement, broadening our policy influence, and replicating our model in other communities across the Adriatic region and beyond.
Completion of smart meter integration and launch of active energy sharing among members, delivering direct financial and environmental benefits to households and businesses in the Drenova neighbourhood and across Rijeka.
Expanding our membership to encompass a broader and more diverse mix of prosumers and consumers, with dedicated outreach to low-income households and public institutions to address energy poverty at community level.
Investment in community-level battery storage solutions to maximise self-sufficiency, reduce grid dependence during peak hours, and increase the economic value of locally produced renewable energy.
Leveraging the tools, methods and experience gained through LIFE DISCOVER to support the establishment of new energy communities across the Adriatic-Ionian region, serving as a knowledge and capacity-building hub for emerging CEPs in Southeast Europe.
Continued development of AI-assisted tools for production forecasting, demand optimisation, and automated energy sharing strategies — making the ECASS platform a reference solution for energy communities across the EU.
Sustained participation in Croatian and EU-level policy processes to ensure that the legal framework enables — rather than obstructs — the growth of citizen energy communities, including reform of distribution system operator obligations.