Community power through virtual net metering in Athens area

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 1 GW 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 municipality in the Athens area. It counts 80.000 residents.

For this episode we wanted to meet two of them: Thanos Katsonis works for the local government of Ilioupoli, and Chris Vrettos is driving force of the social cooperative Electra Energy. They are just about to kick-start a community power organisation. How will they work collaboratively to increase the number of prosumers in Greece and – who knows – to bring other good things to the local community? Unfortunately Thanos couldn’t join that day, but Chris told us how they both push for a citizen energy culture and the steps necessary to achieve this.

When you’re collaborating with the municipality you already have the tunnels in place to get door to door or organized info days and just really reach all parts of local society.

For those who want to get advice or share experience with Chris, feel free to contact him.

This episode and the collaboration lab were made possible thanks to funding from the European Climate Foundation (ECF). The ECF is an international non-profit and its great team promotes climate and energy policies in Europe. In 2019, the European Climate Foundation launched its Energy Democracy programme. It focuses on the support of community energy projects both at the EU and national levels. europeanclimate.org