Empowerment of citizens via crowd funding

RTE engages in crowd funding to enhance the acceptability of its new power lines. The money raised via this approach is complemented by RTE with some funding available via the PAP (Plan d’Accompagnement de Projet), a financing tool agreed with the French government through a public service contract, to finance the sustainable economic development of the areas affected by the construction of new power lines.

Objectives:

• Create a closer relationship with the citizens living within the area affected by the future line and a direct compensation in order to enhance the acceptability of the line
• Give more visibility to the actions which are financed with the PAP funds by using the crowd funding website as a “display case” for these projects
• Promote RTE as a local actor of the development of the territory, in line with the spirit of the PAP

Main information:

In January 2016, RTE launched the webpage ‘My territorial projects’ on the crowd funding platform ULULE. On the page, users can pitch entrepreneurial, cultural, agricultural or a number of other projects which RTE co-finances once they have reached their crowd-funding goal.

According to the public service contract signed between RTE and the government, RTE has to finance actions of sustainable economic development in the area where it undertakes the construction of overhead high voltage lines. The crowd funding practice is a way of honouring that contract and at the same time closely involving citizens into the selection of the projects benefiting from the PAP by having them develop projects themselves or support projects they deem useful for the community. In order to ensure their feasibility, the projects proposed on the website for crowd funding were pre-selected by RTE and its project partner ULULE, who supported RTE in developing this participatory financing solution. In 2015, a call for projects was launched to identify suitable projects ideas. Two and a half months later, 15 projects were selected and two of them have already been financed successfully through crowd funding and implemented.

Additional information:

• RTE is the French electricity transmission system operator. Its mission includes the operation, maintenance and development of the high and extra high voltage network
• ULULE is the major partner of RTE on this practice. It is specialised in crowd funding projects. Between its creation in October 2010 and 2015, 13,106 projects had been effectively and successfully financed in 179 countries around the world via the platform ULULE, with an effective success rate of projects of 66%. As of 2015, the platform had about 1,120,556 members.