Community proofing at EUSEW 2023!
Last week, Balkan Solar Roofs featured in an affordability and inclusion session at EUSEW 2023 organised by Energy Cities and REScoop.eu.
The project was presented by Vedad Suljić on behalf of REIC, a Balkans Solar Roofs partner, and moderated by Sara Giovanini of Energy Cities.
Members of the panel included Ada Amon, Chief Advisor to the Mayor of Budapest on Climate Affairs, Dimitris Katsaprakakis, founding member of the Minoan Energy Community in Crete and Stavroula Pappa, Policy Advisor from REScoop.eu.
Some key takeaways of the session:
- The issue of grid access is rising in importance. Grid operators should become deeply enmeshed in the transition. There seems to be a systematic fallacy of planning new lines vs new RES facilities. The use of AI, IoT and the like could give a hand in predicting consumption patterns to some extent.
- The business sector can play a crucial role in enabling citizen energy via cooperation, co-finance, and consumption.
- Net metering can significantly simplify people's participation in RECs
- Energy is a great political tool and has only become more powerful after the most recent energy crisis - there seems to be a lack of true and unconditional commitment towards the energy transition by key decision makers.
- Communication and citizen engagement are crucial; we can learn a lot from experiences such as that of the from the Minoan Energy Community in Crete and the BSR project and many more.
The full list of participants can be found here; you can [re]watch the session here.
