Inspiring Minds
Interviews and stories of committed people who are inspiring contributors to the energy transition in cities.
Fearless innovation in Munich’s neighbourhoods
Interview with Verena Stoppel and Bernhard Klassen from City of Munich
Since 2016, Munich turned two of its neighbourhoods into a laboratory: over a bit more than 4 years, 20 million euros were invested in testing smart city solutions.
“Smart, yes, but there is a huge challenge related to data quality.”
Interview with Etienne Vignali, SPL Lyon Confluence
What once was a logistics and industrial site with a rather bad reputation has become one of Europe’s biggest urban renewal projects. Create thriving places without overshooting the ecological ceiling: how far is Confluence today from meeting this objective?
“Urban renewal is a very cooperative process, which has to be done together with the people.”
Interview with Stephan Hartmann, City of Vienna
Stephan takes us behind the scenes of an ambitious demonstration project in Vienna’s low-income district of Simmering. How is smartness being used to give more weight to the voices and interests of a city’s residents?
“It’s about understanding what’s important to citizens in Dublin.”
Interview with Donna Gartland, CEO of CODEMA
In this episode Donna Gartland explains what changes can be expected in the city and describes how she and her team trigger conversations with citizens around very abstract topics such as district heating using waste heat from data centres.
“For cities it can feel a bit of a lonely place to be responsible for all of these changes.”
Britt Jurgensen and Laura Williams from Carbon Co-op
The energy and climate challenge is so big that it requires everybody to be involved. New ways of communicating are needed. What are the best means to shape new narratives and, in the end, to make people want to engage in changing the energy system?
Community energy from scratch
Voices from the ECF collaboration lab
2020 was a tough year and never before has the need for local resilience and solidarity been stronger. One extraordinary means for increasing solidarity while […]
It’s all in the mix…of consumers.
Claudia Carani (AESS) and Sara Capuzzo (enostra)
We have interviewed two amazing women and we have talked with them about the right political triggers for renewables in Italy, about the place of […]
“There is a kind of movement that cannot be stopped.”
Juan Eguidazu (E+P Cooperativa) and Javier Zardoya Pamplona (Municipal Energy Agency of Pamplona)
Since almost 20 years the region of Navarra in the North of Spain pioneers with wind and more and more with solar energy. Now, building […]
Strasburg’s first energy community: a long exciting ride
Interview with Jacqui Cullen and Gerard Pol Gili
In this episode we want to understand how a very young energy community in Strasburg, in the North-East of France, came into being. Where did […]
Planting the seeds for citizen energy in difficult times
Interview with Dimos Ispikoudis, City of Komotini
Since 2018, a new Greek legislation allows local authorities to be an energy producer. In this episode, we’ll have a look at how much this […]
