Lecco (Italy). On 18 June 2024, at the Municipality of Lecco, in Lombardy, the Renewable and Solidarity Energy Community (CERS) was officially born.
Among the various bodies that have signed the constitution of the Association, which will be registered in the Single National Register of the Third Sector, also Mary Help of Christians Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of the Lombardy Holy Family Province (ILO) present were the Legal Representative, Sister Ludovica Burlini, and Sister Maridele Sandionigi, coordinator of the Laudato Si’ Commission of the Province.
A Renewable and Solidarity Energy Community (ESRB) is a form of energy exchange between entities that produce and consume energy in the same geographical area. The objective is the reduction of energy transport over long distances and the production of energy through renewable sources, promoting a form of Community capable of giving new responses to energy poverty and educating to virtuous consumption habits.
In 2022, the City of Lecco set up a co-project Board open to all interested entities in the area and providing its own consultants. Mary Help of Christians Institute (IMA) of Lecco joined the board, as the creation of CER was in line with the objectives of conversion to integral ecology and was one of the actions provided for in the vademecum Laudato Si’ of the ILO Province.
In concrete terms, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of IMA Lecco have started a project to study the sizing of the photovoltaic system for the house, requesting permits for the installation of the same, now being completed.
The purpose of the CERS of Lecco is therefore to share all the incentives produced and to deposit them in a Community Fund opened at the Lecco Community Foundation, that will be used to finance environmental education projects and to support the energy poverty of the territory.
“Together with the members and signatories of the ESRB, we have been able to focus on the collective interests, the territorial fragility to take charge of it in a shared and lasting way. But above all, starting from a common environmental and socio-economic context, we have created processes of participation and social innovation capable of triggering a profound change with respect to energy issues, with a view to greater environmental and social justice,” said the Councilor for the Environment of Municipality of Lecco, Renata Zuffi.
For the FMA this is the beginning of a dream: to create energy from renewable sources, share it, and generate value, to finance educational projects that generate new mentalities and, at the same time, promote initiatives among the Educating Communities to translate into concrete steps the path of conversion to integral ecology.
“Everything contributes to the whole and avoiding the rise of a tenth of a degree of global temperature could already be enough to save many people from suffering. But what matters is something less quantitative. Remember that there are no lasting changes without cultural changes, without a maturation of the way of life and social beliefs, and there are no cultural changes without changes in people” (Pope Francis, Laudate Deum, 70).
