CROWDFUNDING OF RENEWABLE SOURCES OF ENERGY

Sa？etak EU wants to use locally available renewable energy sources to meet its future energy needs, avoid the use of fossil fuels, start mitigation to climate change, and avoid using nuclear power plants. This paper will describe the development of different business models with an emphasis on crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is an alternative way of financing where a group of people funds projects, products, services, or ideas using Internet platforms (Hafner i dr. , 2017). Renewable energy sources are most often financed by a lending model of crowdfunding where many participants contribute small amounts to the project. The ratio of the revenue and the invested amount is defined by contract. There are different types of crowdfunding models: crowd lending, equity crowdfunding, donation-based crowdfunding, reward-based crowdfunding and hybrid models of crowdfunding. One of first EU crowdfunding platforms for renewable energy projects is Citizenergy. With over 54 projects and 36 million € collected during a period of 2016-2017. Citizenergy has the experience to be an umbrella organization for other crowdfunding platforms. Citizenergy encourages different communities as energy cooperatives and organizations to participate in renewable energy projects. Crowdfunding is an adjustable business model that successfully connects local RES projects with interested parties