This session was attended by some 50 participants from all over Europe. Local communities of citizens who jointly invest in renewable energy projects contribute to the green transition by producing more green energy and thus contributing to more reduction of CO2 emissions. These are the obvious benefits of citizen energy and citizen participation in the energy transition. In this session, the Interreg NWE project ECCO focuses on the hidden benefits and gains of citizen participation in energy transition in both rural and urban settings. This was explained to the participants by means of 5 short videos of examples from ECCO.