INZEB (within the European project CONGREGATE and the H2020 project POWERPOOR) and ELECTRA Energy Cooperative (within the European project EUCENA) organised on Thursday December 3rd 2020, at 14.30, the online workshop “Energy Communities discuss about Energy Communities. Developments, perspectives, and challenges”, with the support of the Hellenic Office of Greenpeace.

In the first round of the online discussion, the objectives and the framework of the workshop were presented. Emphasis was also placed on the fact that this workshop was the first Energy Democracy Dialogue. Energy Democracy Dialogues is an open platform where energy experts, policymakers, businesses, politicians, academicians, civil society representatives and citizens meet and debate on the critical issue of Energy Democracy. The main aims of the Dialogues are to address the energy transition challenges and to influence the local, regional, national, and continental energy agendas.

Then the floor was given to representatives of Energy Communities (EC) from all over Greece in order to present how they started, their vision, their goals and the challenges they face. The ECs that participated in the event came from rural areas, from islands as well as some of them were active in urban environment. There was also variety in the ECs regarding their size, their dynamic, since when are they active.

The invited experts in the field of ECs significantly contributed to the flow of the discussion. Particularly, participated: Antonia Proka and Stavroula Pappa (RESCOOP), Panagiotis Korkolis (Financial expert, ENA institute), Takis Grigoriou (Hellenic Office of Greenpeace), Agapi Tsampazi (Heinrich Boll), Anastasios Politidis (Msc KALO), Maya Andreou (Community Energy River), Takis Ktenidis (University of West Attica), Dimitris Tsalemis (YPEN), Stelios Psomas (PV Expert) and Miriam Rodriguez Ruiz (ELECTRA Energy Cooperative).

In conclusion, the three main topics discussed and highlighted in this first online discussion between the representatives of ECs, the experts but also through the comments and questions of the approximately 270 participants of the audience were the following:

• ECs’ ways of financing and the need for financial instruments
• The model of (virtual) net metering, how it works and which would be ideal
• Imbalance in the representation of men – women in ECs, need for more female representation and elimination of any racial discrimination.

Thus, this fruitful online discussion not only gave to ECs the opportunity to be heard and presented, highlighting the challenges as well as the plans for the future, but at the same time laid the foundations for future related actions and discussions to be held.

 event recording is available here.