Benetutti diary: the PAN EU Workshop and meeting a powerful energy community
TwinERGY is back and ready to face the one-year project that lies ahead. One month ago, we came back from Benetutti with a ton of stories, experiences and learnings from getting to know the whole consortium and the energy community of this little and cosy village at the heart of Sardinia. Now, we want to write all of them down and share this journey with you.
After an adventurous trip, TwinERGY partners arrived in Benetutti and met face to face for the first time due to previous COVID restrictions. This occasion also became a general assembly to talk about the project’s achievements, what’s coming so far and analyse each tech module and WP activities. These discussions helped to comprehend the project, and were a very productive effort to follow a common direction towards achieving a successful end.
One of the most interesting activities done during this experience was the hands-on workshop with citizens of Benetutti. Conducted by KWMC, Ideas for Change and STAM, the workshop was intended to get feedback from participants on the project, what are their concerns regarding energy consumption and how they envision the energy future.
The session started collecting the motivations of current and future participants of the TwinERGY project. Money, energy crisis or environmental considerations were some of the reasons why people would like to join the study. Following this, participants were introduced to the technology framework of the project. By showing TwinERGY’s dashboard, citizens could provide feedback on the app, if they feel comfortable with it and provide any changes they would like to see.
Finally, for the last dynamic, we asked citizens to try to imagine the energy market in 5 years. Ideas for Change launched this question in a creative activity called Future Energy Times where neighbours had to become journalists and write a newsworthy article on how they envision their energy consumption and environment for the years to come. In groups, citizens worked on their pieces and presented them in front of the community, roleplaying as if they were in a TV show. Becoming energy self-sufficient, promoting a greener consumption, addressing energy deficits and contributing to making Benetutti a more desirable place to live in, were some of the main news shared during the workshop.
After this first round, the next day the PAN EU Workshop took place. Local authorities, the whole consortium, experts and online attendees joined the first TwinERGY’s PAN EU event focused on citizen participation and engagement learnings in energy. Project Manager, Stylianos Karatzas, introduced TwinERGY’s citizen engagement framework and main learnings and findings on the field so far, which were complemented by Carolyn Hassan, CEO of KWMC, who explained the adaptation of the Bristol Approach to ensure diversity and inclusion in the project.
How privacy and trust could facilitate accountable decision making? To respond to this question, Arthur van der Wess, CEO at Arthur’s Legal, talked about trusted data sharing as an enabler for citizen engagement. Following up this introduction, Anna Higueras, Project Manager at IFC, hosted a special session with the four TwinERGY pilot leaders: Marco Barbagelata (Benetutti), Matt Jones (Bristol), Johannes Uepping (Steinheim) and Georgia Roussou (Athens).
All of them made an overview of the demonstration sites and how they are implementing the project framework and engaging with citizens. Hereunder, started the round table discussion which highlighted the importance of understanding technological solutions by citizens, how they interact with their data and how it is essential to ensure inclusion and diversity in the pilots.
Lastly, the workshop finalised with the views and contributions of experts on citizen participation in the energy sector, who responded to the previous pilot session with their expertise. Mia Ala Juusela, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Thomas Mikkelsen, Head of Social & Behavioural Innovation at Smart Innovation Norway, and Dr Christian Gebhardt, Head of the regional division of the smart & sustainable city group at Drees & Sommer, were the leading voices of the session. Some of the common points that all of them emphasised were the interesting fact that TwinERGY participants were interested in the money saving but also concerned about the global environmental crisis, which encourages a feeling of community. Taking into account the “tipping point”, what gets people motivated in the first place is key to kick off a successful project, as well as having in mind how it will be replicated and scale up to inform participants.
All in all, visiting Benetutti and getting to know its energy community as well as TwinERGY partners was amazing. The consortium was able not only to share insights on the project, talk about the upcoming milestones and main concerns, but also they could work in the field, with citizens, which let them know about how it feels to get involved in such a project. Neighbours of Benetutti: grazie, è stato un vero piacere!
