“Degrowth is a pretty loaded term on its own”

The wind has turned again for energy communities in Greece: a recent change in law now forbids, for example, the participation of businesses. This shift leaves more than one community energy initiative puzzled. And still, community leaders keep on fighting for it as a means to bring environmental and social sustainability – ultimately also as a means to turn the blurry degrowth concept into something very concrete.

Chris Giotitsas, with whom I’ve met for this episode, says: “Well, degrowth is a pretty loaded term on its own. When applied to energy, it’s even more complex because questions arise as to what types of energy needs are considered the baseline and how much energy is considered enough when we’re talking about reaching a certain limit and then considering limits themselves.”

Chris is researcher at Peer to Peer Lab and President of the energy community CommonEn in the North of Greece. CommonEn was founded in May 2021 in Ioannina. Its purpose is the production and management of clean and cheap energy. One of his planned energy community projects is about small urban agrivoltaics involving people with mental health issues. To make this happen, the energy community closely works together with the municipality of Ioannina.

Similar exciting people-powered initiatives will be in the spotlight of the upcoming final event of the SCCALE 20-30-50 project. It’s on October 7th 11:30-17:30 in Brussels. Register now and join us there!

This episode was produced with support from SCCALE 20-30-50. SCCALE is an EU project (Horizon 2020 programme) which makes collaboration happen to get many more energy communities up and running. The people behind SCCALE203050 work on a methodology and toolkit for citizens, cities and policy makers. If you, too, want to see more local energy communities across Europe, check out the toolkit and explore all of the project’s resources at the website sccale203050.eu.