City Stories by Energy Cities

2020 was a tough year and never before has the need for local resilience and solidarity been stronger. One extraordinary means for increasing solidarity while making places stronger are renewable energy communities. Since recently renewable energy communities are legally defined and protected by EU legislation. “Community energy” or “community power” refers to people in a community cooperating on...

We have interviewed two amazing women and we have talked with them about the right political triggers for renewables in Italy, about the place of women in the sector and I even learned during our conversation what ethical energy means. Our interviewees were Sara and Claudia: Sara Capuzzo is the President of enostra, which is a major Italian renewables cooperative. And for a new energy community pr...

Since almost 20 years the region of Navarra in the North of Spain pioneers with wind and more and more with solar energy. Now, building an energy community with the regional capital Pamplona as a partner means getting to the next level. This energy community is part of the local government’s climate change strategy for 2030.  I wanted to gain a very personal and honest insight into the creation pr...

In this episode we want to understand how a very young energy community in Strasburg, in the North-East of France, came into being. Where did it all begin with this cooperative called the Brasseurs d’Energie (which means Energy Brewers)? What role did the city council play? And how challenging was the cooperation between citizens and the administration? Jacqui Cullen, an Irish-born cooperative mem...

Since 2018, a new Greek legislation allows local authorities to be an energy producer. In this episode, we’ll have a look at how much this legislation was a gamechanger for Komotini, a local government in the very North-Eastern edge of Greece. The city counts around 60.000 inhabitants and we were joined by one of them: Dimos Ispikoudis. Dimos works for the city of Komotini. He is the Special advis...

Sometimes it’s good to look into history when we want to better see the future. That’s why we’ve interviewed the Belgian academic historian Tine de Moor over the phone. Her teaching and research at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands focus on how collective action developed over time. We talked about the trends she observes in cooperatives and about cooperation in times of crisis. During...

Today we take a look at the democratic potential of the urban commons. The commons are those resources we all share and use like water, energy, food or public space. I’ve talked to someone who deals with this in her everyday work: I’ve interviewed Nathalie van Loon who is the commons coordinator at the city council of Amsterdam. Nathalie talks about her quite unique job and the societal agreement...

Before Covid-19 turned our lives upside down, we met with Geert Vanhorebeek in the Belgium old university town of Leuven. Geert is the city’s sustainable development advisor. You’ll see, he knows how to bring people’s ideas and engagement into municipal action. There is much to learn from Leuven on how to build on strong local communities. During the conversation, Geert tells the story of how sola...

For this episode, we have met two very committed people from Croatia: Zoran and Lucia. Zoran Kordic works for ZEZ, green energy cooperative in Croatia. And Lucia Topic is spatial planner in the city of Krizevci which recently became a playground for crowdinvesting in renewables. They are both driven by the personal desire to spread the “energy community virus” with solar roofs across their country...

For this episode, we have met Alba del Campo. Alba is a Spanish journalist and activist fighting for more energy democracy. She is advisor to the local authority of Cadiz since 2015. A new local government was elected in 2015 and re-elected in 2019. Since then, the city opened the energy politics to its citizens. This was a first radical change and there are more to come. Alba explains why and how...

In this episode, we speak with Suvi Holm from the Finnish city of Tampere. Suvi is CEO of the non-profit environmental company Ekofellows (Ekokumppanit Oy). Ekofellows is owned by the municipality and advises citizens and companies on energy efficient measures and renewable energy. I first asked Suvi to describe her city. Tampere is dubbed the “Manchester of Finland” for its industrial past as the...

Last December we have met Sofie Verhoeven in her office in the city hall of Ghent. Sofie is in charge of citizen participation in this beautiful andv vibrant city in the Flemish part of Belgium. Ghent counts over 500 local initiatives, including one of the most pioneering renewable community neighbourhood. We wanted to know from Sofie how they manage to have such an active local community. In our...