Reducing thresholds for citizens to make energy democracy work

This is quite a special episode of City Stories: Our host Miriam Eisermann moderated a live session with city makers recorded on the occasion of Energy Cities’ 35th anniversary and the Annual Forum in Besançon. Tune in to the discussions around community engagement and also what role AI can or cannot play in participation and citizen engagement. In this episode you will see that cities and citizens are still somewhat searching for the right way towards energy democracy. It’s become increasingly important to go rethink how we govern, going back to the core: involving citizens in decision-making.

This event explored the evolution of citizen engagement as a concept: how cities have been going about it, what has changed, what are the current challenges and future rays of hope. From less formalised to more structured forms of collaboration to involve citizens in decision making on local energy, the workshop will allow participants to analyse their evolution. Together with experts from the field we will look at engagement practices from the past and successful methods from the present time. The conversation will also lead us to reflect on the possible impacts of new technology such as artificial intelligence on these processes.

Speakers of our testimonial workshop “City Stories of citizens engagement on the energy transition”:  

• Anne-Marie Zwanink, Senior Project manager & Strategic engagement advisor, City of Utrecht (The Netherlands) 
• Corentin Girard, Coordinator of the Energy Area, Valencia Clima y Energia (Spain) 
• Christos Porios, Funder of OpenCouncil (Greece) 
• Judith Ferrando, Co-Director of Missions Publiques (France) 

Helpful projects that were mentioned during the session:

SSH Centre: engages directly with stakeholders across research, policy, and business (including citizens) to strengthen social innovation, SSH-STEM collaboration, transdisciplinary policy advice, inclusive engagement, and SSH communities across Europe, accelerating the EU’s transition to carbon neutrality.

WELLBASED: energy poverty and health impacts. The project designed, implemented and evaluated a comprehensive urban programme to significantly reduce energy poverty and its effects on the citizens health and wellbeing, built on evidence-based approaches in six pilot cities 

E2Cuties: Engaged Energy Communities in Urban areas with Technology Integrated Energy Systems. The project will empower six local energy communities – 1 in Dublin (IE), 1 in Leuven (BE), 3 in Utrecht (NL) and 1 in Strasbourg (FR) – to create integrated energy systems, thereby strengthening their role in the local energy transition.