Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Welcome to the list, a podcast series for Menlite and friends focusing on the clean energy transition for the European Union and the EU Commission funded energy projects that will help us achieve it. My name is aren't. I am the editor of the list and your host.
There are over 2400 islands within the territory of the European Union, of which more than 2200 are inhabited. Some, like Sicily in Italy, count millions of inhabitants. Others, like the island of Mykonos in Greece, count but a few thousands. While nearly all of these islands, big and small, have access to abundant, renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar, many of them depend on expensive fossil fuel imports for their energy supply. It is a situation that makes little sense and compelled the EU Commission to create the clean energy for EU Islands initiative back in 2017 with its own secretariat as part of the Clean Energy for all Europeans package. The aim of the initiative is to create a long term framework to help islands generate their own sustainable, low cost energy that will result in reduced energy costs and greatly increased production of renewable energy, construction of energy storage facilities and demand response systems using, of course, the latest technologies better energy security for islands which will be less reliant on imports, improved air quality, lower greenhouse gas emissions and less impact on island's natural environment. And last but certainly not least, the creation of new jobs and business opportunities boosting island's economic self sufficiency. To better understand the situation and the differences among the islands, I reached out to Zia Leonard and Cecile Barrer. I caught up with them at the EU project zone at Enlit Europe, an annual opportunity for european projects to meet up and share lessons in person. Both Zi and Cecil represent Project Nesoi. This EU funded project aims to facilitate the energy transition on EU islands and go one step forward by providing islands with training, technical support, cooperation opportunities and robust funding opportunities. One of the project's most important tools is a platform that includes e learning materials for capacity building and a matchmaking function, connecting technology suppliers, much needed experts and funding opportunities to the islanders.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: There are a lot of differences amongst the islands. You have islands in the north that are fully decarbonized, that have the planning for evs, that have planning for various things, and then you have some other islands that are though interconnected, they still have their issues. What were, let's say, the most eye popping differences that you have faced during the project's lifespan.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: I think maybe the difference in the south and why in the south is a bit slower in a good way. We're saying that it's taking a bit more time for the southern island to find this strong local support that is needed to start working on this type of project.
I don't know, maybe because they have other emergencies, like dealing with a peak of tourism in summer and so on. This has postponed a little bit some other important problems that they had to solve. But for sure the dynamic needed is really bottom up. So once really there is a couple of people strongly mobilized in a municipality to carry on the initial efforts needed to create this dynamic, to start working on energy transition project, then it's almost one. Because the kind of first flame is there and because they are local, they will convince step by step, sometimes it's very slow process, group of stakeholder by group of stakeholders, they will convince the people that effort is needed, money needs to be invested in the change, that yes, it will change your way of doing things, but it's okay, we do it for future generation, we do it to be sustainable. There will be no negative impact on the tourism. It's even like attracting sometimes different kind of tourism, but with even more positive impact to the locals. So I think it's a bit what happened, why north and south are a bit at different pace, but now it has started in the south and they are doing really great in many places.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Your thoughts?
[00:05:11] Speaker D: Yeah, I just want to add that one of the biggest drivers is the capacity building. So where one island can learn from the experiences of another island. So that's actually our role in the project, is capacity building. And so Cecile organized these Erasmus study tours in three areas, and it was able to bring separate islands together to learn from one another. And the feedback that I received is that this was very valuable because otherwise they wouldn't think of these solutions. And so when they're learning from real experiences, both the good and the bad of the experiences, they're able to have a leg up on their energy transition.
It gives them ideas, it gives them contacts, it gives them solutions that they can learn from each other. So maybe you want to talk about the Erasmus.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: Yes. So this Erasmus program has been proposed in 2022, just after Covid. It was a budget that we could not spend to organize one to one exchange. It was planned like this in the project, and we decided to propose another version of this exchange of knowledge. And we set up three trips. So we find hosts in three islands, one in Orkney island. We went to Sicily as well, and to Asipalia, and we had some main topics, two main topics per trip. And we opened a call for expression of interest to join this tour, open to beneficiaries of Nezoi, but not only, it was open to broaden the network of kind of Nezoi islanders, Nezoi beneficiaries. And we obtained really like three at the end, we selected the people on their level of potential replication of potential application of what they would learn during the trip. And we obtained three groups of eight to ten people. Each group was made of people from north Europe and South Europe, big islands, small islands, people who were more interested in energy planning, others that had already done several projects. So it was very interesting to really put around the table for a short week. These people.
We had really a nice program supported by our hosts and by the participants themselves, plus external guests that we included in the program to exchange about all aspects of project development, to give them the tools that they need when they are back to their island, go further with their project development.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Out of curiosity, what was the selection process?
[00:07:59] Speaker C: So selection process, since we were distributing this Nazoi money, it's a cascade funding project. So we were distributing the project money. They had to fill like a survey. They had to explain to us what were their past experience, their profile, their motivation to join the trip. They had to explain to us what topic and what trip was their favorite one. So we have three options there to choose and explain to us how they would exploit the knowledge that they would gather during the trip in the next step of their project development. Look at.
[00:08:43] Speaker D: So really it was answering your question, what are the main differences across all of the islands? This was a deliberate attempt to lower that knowledge gap. Okay, what were the main experiences in the north and the south and big and small islands? And put it all on the table and everything gets put on the platform. So all of the study tours.
Another thing we did is webinars with five topics. So across 50 projects, how can we boil them down into five main groups? So there was energy communities, hydrogen energy, planning, mobility, oh, and renewables. It was the fifth one. In answering your question, it's how are we able to transfer this knowledge where there are so many different challenges?
And how can we make that more accessible to everyone, to the technology providers, the funders, the citizens and the islands themselves, to learn from these experiences? So it's more than funding.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: The islanders are welcoming in general of the support that projects like Nesoi bring them, and of course, the funding. It is not always easy, however, to find the help. You need to first understand the complex procedures of turning from fossil fuel to renewables successfully, or even to find the right people to help you out.
Often people with the right expertise are hard to find locally on the islands. And then there is the delicate and important issue of funding. It is not a given that one can get a loan from a bank, for example, or a subsidy from the government. In fact, this was Cecile's experience, as she describes it.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: I think they are welcoming support.
They are not like having a list of the support coming from here is not good, and the support coming from there is good. I think they welcome every support. So it was quite easy. They had to go through selective process as well, to obtain the subsidies that we offered and the support in thermoskid that the consortium offered to them. So there was a kind of competition feeling, and the fact that they won the competition was very positive and allow the project to start on a positive note. So, no, they were very happy to have this opportunity to collaborate with the consortium. It gets a bit trickier when they realize how much time they have to do the project. Usually we could support them for one year long with skis and money for them to fund local advisors that they wanted to work with. So one year, it's short timeline, and so everything had to start fast. And it's not always easy when you have to deal with, for instance, municipality like contracting externals. They have their own process, and sometimes it takes three months for them to select the external validator that they need. So there was a bit of delay there, and they get a bit stressed when we have to take.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I can imagine. If the selection process alone takes three months out of the twelve, it can be quite stressful. But what exactly were the subsidies that you offer to the islands?
[00:12:27] Speaker C: So we offer to them a certain amount of money, so they were free to use it to contract advisors that they needed to work on their project. So it could be legal advisors or technicians, so they were free to work with who they wanted.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: So control was on them on the collaborations that they wanted to.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: Yeah, for that part of the support. Then there is another part of the support that was offered directly by the Nezoi consortium partners. So we had a work program of one year with tasks, and depending the nature of the task, like leadership was on consortium partner or an external partner.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Working for the energy transition on an island can be challenging when one has limited access to funding, to the necessary technologies and to the technical expertise required. But that is not all. Although Cecile testified to the fact that the islanders welcome the support, especially when it comes to funding, the social aspect of the endeavor does represent a challenge on its own. How many times have we heard on the news about protests on islands, because locals fear that, for example, windmills will ruin the landscape. In addition, what happens when the funding ends?
[00:14:01] Speaker D: And just to go back to your earlier question about social challenges, the most important part is that out of the 50 projects, they all had individual challenges. A lot of them were saying that they were able to accomplish a lot within the one year of the funding, but they want to continue. So, for example, if they had local workshops with stakeholders, businesses and citizens, that was great, that helped them, but they want to enlarge that. So now what they've learned, how can they apply that in the next phase after Nesoi? And so the platform is a way to allow these parties to continue this process of getting funding, getting technical support, getting technological solutions, locally sourced if possible, so that each island can continue their clean energy transition, because it's important to understand that they're all in different phases. So, for example, there was one island that I think it was in Finland, who has already been carbon neutral since 2014, and they have their clean energy transition plan, and they've chosen their technologies. So our funding was able to help them along their phase. But whereas another island had no clean energy transition plan, so our funding was able to help them develop a clean energy transition plan. So whatever phase the islands were at, our funding helped them progress a bit further.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Another important tool is the creation of energy communities within an island's ecosystem. These are citizen driven collective energy actions that contribute to the clean energy transition, advancing energy efficiency within local communities. According to the EU Commission, energy communities can contribute to increasing public acceptance of renewable energy projects and make it easier to attract private investments in the clean energy transition.
Energy communities can also be an effective means of restructuring our energy systems by empowering citizens to drive the energy transition locally and directly benefit from better energy efficiency, lower bills, reduced energy poverty, and more local green job opportunities.
[00:16:34] Speaker D: The reason why energy communities gets me so excited is because having worked in smart grids in the past and seeing that there's really a lot of blocking points, the energy communities, for me, is an answer to smart grids. So how are we able to democratize ownership of the assets? And for me, it's interesting. It has a long, wide potential, because average people will change their behaviors when they become owners of an asset. There's really an interest for them to get involved. Whereas before, with smart grids, there was a very small fraction of people who cared about sustainability.
Demand response maybe put three pennies in people's pockets, but with energy communities, it's taking all of the different stakeholders, all of them because for an energy community to work, you really need the participation of all stakeholders across every value chain and giving them interest in collaborating together.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: But do they have the knowledge, do they have the ability? Do they have what it takes to put it simply, to do that themselves, or do they need someone to provide that as a service to them? And I think this is also where the Nestoi platform will play a big role, right?
[00:18:04] Speaker C: Yeah. For me, energy community, it's really like a tangible structure of this flame that I was talking about, this bottom up dynamic that is really positive when it exists to support the energy transition project. So energy community usually starts from a very distant number of few people. You need two, three person to start, and then it's about they will do an effort to aggregate more people, and they will aggregate people because they will explain their first project, the first project they want to develop, and they will explain their trajectory, where they want to go. So you have an energy community. It's really like a growing thing. So they will have maybe a simple pv on a roof project, and only for that, they will need to already learn a lot, because even if they are motivated, if they know a little bit about pv, I mean, they are not always technicians. They need to find people to help them to obtain the space that they need to install the PV, the connection to the grid and so on, or to local systems. But it's really like a learning by doing phenomenon at the end.
And you don't have to choose one technology when you are an energy community, you start with pv if you want, and then in your trajectory. And we have seen this in different energy plants, other technologies, onshore winds, small wind turbines, you can have marine technology as well that you want to test. And probably, if it's positive, install and develop further around the island. So it's energy community, it's really the starting point, and it's something that can last for long, for years. And energy, I think it's good that people understand that they have to be involved. And a lot of this EU project has this huge effort, part of the project, to make the user be an actor. So energy community has this possibility transform the user in actor. So he takes part in the decision. He understand where the money spent, how the money is spent. And yeah, it's a very good structure to start developing.
[00:20:33] Speaker D: Also, to answer your question, I think, no, people don't generally have the knowledge, but this is why the commission has been doing a lot to formalize energy communities. So energy cooperatives have had a long history in Europe, some countries more than others. But there's at least one energy cooperative in every country. And so by putting formal definitions, the commission has been know there's collective self consumption, and there's renewable energy communities, and there's citizen energy communities. And they're all different aspects of energy communities, but they're kind of taking the existing structure of cooperatives and putting definitions to it. And then once the definitions have been adopted, then the countries can then apply the policies and the subsidies to pursuing these energy communities. And I think another answer to your question is, how is Nessoy helping? I think personally, Nessoy really is showing the world that we're all one know, we're all one energy community. We can all have ownership, even if you don't. Even a citizen who doesn't have financial stake in a clean energy transition of an island, it's important to them. And so this is kind of putting it all into one platform that covers all aspects, technology, finance and project and municipalities, to show that we're all out for the same goal, the same objective of decarbonization, digitalization and sustainability. And so out of the 50 projects, maybe ten of them were really setting up energy communities in their islands. But it's not to say that we're all not one larger energy community. And the platform, I think, is a way to show that all of the stakeholders are involved, and especially the municipalities, the financial providers and the technology providers, because in energy communities, you're bringing these three important entities together and giving the ownership to the average citizen. And so I think the platform is really just one way to visualize that not only is this working, but there is a long term potential in creating these sub energy communities.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Generating sustainable, low cost energy that can lead to reduced energy costs, increased renewable energy production, robust energy storage facilities and improved energy security does not come without its challenges, as we heard from Cecil and Zia. But if I could choose a couple of things to underline from the conversation, those would be the need for collaboration between public and private stakeholders that brings energy communities to the front line.
And of course, the need for funding and digitalization, something that the Nesoi project is helping with by providing training, technical support, cooperation opportunities and funding. In the episodes to come, we are going to focus on energy communities funding and the digitalization of the sector as they seem to be the three key factors that, if used correctly, will enable the clean energy transition. You've been listening to the list, a podcast brought to you by Enlit and friends. You can find us on Spotify, Apple and the Enlit World website. Just hit subscribe and you can access our other episodes too. I'm Mareti Daradimu. Thank you for joining us.
