City-citizen collaboration: “The main thing is to not reinvent the wheel”

In this episode of City Stories, our host Miriam is joined by two community energy experts I know well and I loved working with lately: her colleague Anna Francis from Energy Cities and Dimitris Katsakaprakis from Minoan Energy Community, the biggest energy community in Greece. Together, they’ve been working in the LIFE LOOP project, helping cities and communities set up joint local renewable energy projects. They talk about what it takes to make city services and citizen groups work together. What culture and knowledge does it require to come up with a viable energy community where ownership is shared?

Anna and Dimitris had plenty of insights — and some inspiring stories — to share. The journey they describe in the conversation and the efforts by all LIFE LOOP partners is impressive. Listeners will understand that LIFE LOOP wasn’t just about kilowatts and solar panels – it was essentially about people, and the courage to try something different together. All the achievements are also summarized in a brochure. Change really happens when those two sides meet around the same table. Anna also shared the good news that LIFE LOOP will continue in a way or another through the new SHINE project. It’s exactly what Sir Isaac Newton said, “Energy is not lost or destroyed, it is merely transferred from one party to the next.”

Explore resources around the topic on energy-cities.eu/lifeloop
This episode was made possible by funding from the EU LIFE-CET program.