City Stories by Energy Cities

What is it like to be the young director of a capital city’s energy agency? I found some answers when talking with Janiks Ikaunieks. Janis leads the Riga Energy Agency in Latvia since 2 years. He told me how his agency is tackling the city’s challenges, which spots help him relax and why innovation is not always the first thing to do. Riga is known for its wooden buildings, art nouveau architectur...

When a group of citizens or civil servants with no previous experience in financing starts a renewable energy project, this can be a huge challenge to go and look for funding. Whether it is for a solar installation or a collective retrofitting project, financing any of this is a black box for many of us. We thought we should delve into the jungle of financial engineering for energy communities tod...

An energy cooperative never pops out of nowhere. Rather, it grows silently with motivated citizens putting their heads together and imagining how they can themselves produce renewable energy. Join me and my guest Chloé Verlinden to learn about some great ways for citizens to become energy producers, both on solar and offshore wind energy. Chloé explains the cooperative's activities with external p...

Welcome to the small city of Porec on the west coast of Croatia. Porec has a rich history and culture with an old town nerved by narrow streets from Roman times. In the very city center, Venetian-style houses are sitting next to Roman temples, various gothic, baroque, and renaissance palaces, fortification walls, and towers. The town’s main sight is a Basilica dating from the 6th century. It’s a U...

The Netherlands is one of the leading countries when it comes to an energy policy taking into account many different people and sectors. The Dutch National Climate Agreement from 2019 is the best example. So, to achieve its climate and energy goals, the country needs the highest possible involvement and public ownership of green energy, including for heating homes. Today’s episode brings together...

If you’ve been following along with this podcast in the past months or more, you’ll know that we like to dig out local initiatives that might look small for now, but that can have a big impact in the future. For this episode, we picked one of them: the Economes, an awareness raising program on energy use - from citizens for citizens. We meet Hugo and Julie who are both involved in it. Hugo Weisbec...

Today’s guests will explore the question on how we can create a culture of energy citizenship. I sit together with two inspiring women: Dr BinBin Pearce who is researcher at TU Delft and Margot Vingerhoedt who is Head of communications, marketing and press for the Belgian cooperative Ecopower. While BinBin has been looking into the sociological dimension of collaboration using inputs from environm...

For this episode we wanted to know what it needs to spark such initiatives, how we can bring more women into it and what all this has to do with taking risks. That is why we invited Katharina Habersbrunner who is Head of sustainable energy and climate solutions at the non-profit network WECF, Women Engage for a Common Future. Katharina has an impressive record of community energy experience, and s...

For this episode, our podcast host Miriam Eisermann sat down with Martin Mrkos, Mayor the City of Žďár nad Sázavou in Czech Republic. He is joined by Michal Bacovsky, who is Smart City Coordinator of Zdar. The city counts 21.000 inhabitants and is one of the 10 pilot cities involved in the EUCityCalc project. After intensive thermal insulation of its buildings and first renewable installations, th...

If you want to trigger big change in a city you essentially need 2 things: a great deal of political will and people in the administration who know how to go about it. Such a massive change is underway in the cities of Brasov in Romania and in Mouscron in Belgium. Both cities have been working with the so-called "transition management" approach which should make them carbon-neutral by 2050. This q...

How do you engage individuals and local organisations in the energy transition? What does it need to make them allies in the journey towards greener cities? And what if people get tired of workshops around the city of TOMORROW? In this episode I was joined by two “activators” as I would call them: Anne-Claire Urvoas from the city of Brest where she is in charge of mobilisation for the energy trans...

The City of Valencia and Dublin County are both on an ambitious trajectory: Not only do they aim for becoming greener and fairer cities by 2050. But also, they do push beyond their comfort zone by designing their roadmap with a big variety of stakeholders. We chatted with Jordi Peris Blanes from Valencia and Katie Harrington from the Dublin Energy Agency Codema and learnt more about this very crea...

In this episode Miriam sits down with Pau Balcells from the Barcelona Data Office. Together they dive into the role of data to design, feed and assess innovative and sustainable policies. The city of Barcelona is leveraging on data for better decision-making and to become a smarter and fairer place. During the talk Pau shares why big data have become the issue of our time. He also talks about the...

In this episode, two energy experts based in the East of France join us to share their plans for an energy community in the city of Besançon. Besançon counts around 120.000 inhabitants. Anik Lehman-Tron is a renewables expert and works for the local government. Mireia Matencio is legal advisor at Opale Energies Naturelles, a renewables company based in the same area. Together, they want to operate...

Greece is a gifted country when it comes to renewables and it was the first EU country to have a law on energy communities all the way back in 2018. In its national energy and climate plan, the Greek government has set a target of in self-consumption by 2030. We wanted to know how this translates into concrete action on the ground and did a virtual travel to Ilioupoli. Ilioupoli is a sub-urban mun...

The city of Zenica, a coal and steel producer, lies right in the center of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Jakuta talks us through the different projects of the local government to increase efficiency, including Toplana Zenica plant. She proudly presents the city's ambitions, but she also mentions the issues regarding the lack of knowledge around new energy practices at the local and national political le...

We talk with Lucie Middlemiss about who the energy poor are in Leeds (and elsewhere), why they should be involved in finding the right answers, but also how she thinks research can help improve energy poverty policies in cities in the UK and Europe. Lucie is Professor of Environment and Society at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds. Lucie has an impressive track record...

Until now, Valencia with its 800.000 inhabitants may be more known for its mild climate and lovely beaches than for its incredibly collaborative and forward-looking energy policy. In part 2 of our ECF collaboration lab series, we dive into Valencia’s impressive efforts to involve the local community in energy and climate matters. A big change of culture is about to happen. In this episode we chatt...

Today we’re in the South of Italy: in the region of Naples, four small municipalities team up for the energy transition so as to make their place attractive for current and future generations. UCSA, which is the official name of this group of municipalities (61.000 inhabitants), puts special emphasis on citizen-led initiatives. That is why they came to the ECF collaboration lab with representative...

The City of Prague has an ambitious Climate Plan. In addition to high goals for energy efficiency, this plan includes an objective of fostering the emergence of energy communities. For this episode we met Miloslav Franek from the energy management department of Prague City Hall and Tereza Mc Laughlin Vanova from the Czech Association of Local Energy Managers. Together, they are about to set up the...

Since 2016, Munich turned two of its neighbourhoods into a laboratory: over a bit more than 4 years, 20 million euros were invested in testing smart city solutions. That money came from the EU funded Smarter Together project. In this episode we chat with Bernhard Klassen and Verena Stoppel who both coordinated one after the other the Smarter Together Project – one of many innovative projects in Mu...

For this episode we are in Lyon, France. Its neighbourhood called Confluence is all about transformation: What once was a logistics and industrial site with a rather bad reputation has become one of Europe’s biggest urban renewal projects. With a surface of 150 hectares, 600.000 sqm existing floor area and 1 million sqm of new buildings this urban project takes up the challenge of our time: how ca...

The City of Vienna is often quoted as an outstanding example of people-centred urban renewal. From urban gardening to shared mobility solutions - when it comes to good governance in urban development planning hardly any other city is breaking the ground as much as Vienna does. Is this one reason why the Austrian capital is regularly rated as the world’s most liveable city? Our guest, this time, is...

Dublin counts half a million residents. Its energy agency CODEMA is in the early stages of redesigning the city’s energy landscape by involving the local community. The challenge is huge: How do you decarbonise a capital city that is very much driven by the fast-growing digital economy? Today I talk with Donna Gartland who is heading the Dublin energy agency with a staff of 16 people. She will exp...

The energy and climate challenge is so big that it requires everybody to be involved. New ways of communicating are needed. What are the best means to shape new narratives and, in the end, to make people want to engage in changing the energy system? In this episode we talked with Laura Williams and Britt Jurgensen from CarbonCoop: one is a trained theatre practitioner, the other a political activi...