 Welcome to the future of Eastern Europe and Ecodemocracy, a four-part podcast special produced by the Green European Foundation with the support of the Green Institute of Greece and the financial support of the European Parliament to the Green European Foundation. The podcast features extracts from interviews of delegates to the future of Eastern Europe Conference, which took place on the 6th and 7th of June in Riga. The conference brought together young green activists from different parts of Eastern Europe to talk about the future of the region as well as the challenges and opportunities for an ecological and progressive turnaround. In this episode, we hear from Sandy Familiari, from Elektra Energy Cooperative and Greenpeace Greece, Teo Komet, from the European Green Party and the Green European Foundation, Aliexe Kodritski, from the Belarusian Greens and Georgi Ptskeladje, from CDN Corporation and Development Network Eastern Europe. The episode focuses on energy and energy democracy, our reliance on fossil fuels and its geopolitical ramifications and the possibilities for a sustainable, just and democratic transition. Do you think that more energy democracy will automatically lead to faster decarbonisation and improve social quality? For sure. Yeah, if citizens get access to energy democracy, which means renewable sources of energy, then for sure it will be fastened. We've seen examples already happening in Greece, for example, energy communities helped to develop more and more solar infrastructure for starters, and we will see many more in the future, which means that we have automatically some citizens cut off from fossil fuels and it's a very practical method to go forward. Are there any good examples of energy democracy in your country, from your experience? We've seen many collective schemes working on energy, which are very good. We have more than 1,000 energy communities registered at the moment. Of course, I don't know one by one what they're doing, but we have some examples that are pretty impressive. We have energy communities solely from women, with women members. We have others who give away free shares to vulnerable households, and we've seen solidarity taking place. We've seen projects that actually respect the environment and the local communities. The other day I was talking to a person from an energy community in Agriño, and they told me that they were planning to install a wind turbine, and the local society didn't want it, so they changed plans and they actually did a solar park, which is awesome. They take people's thoughts into account and it's really nice to see them collaborating and actually adapting to the circumstances, is not the issue with big companies usually. They do not care about a society or a community and they just want to take the profit away from the people actually. In the light of the current events in Eastern Europe, what do you think is the role of energy development? Very interesting question. I think that the ongoing war in Ukraine has shown us the importance of the combination of state efforts and also citizen organizing. This is something that does not come from anywhere. We have already seen it during COVID, how important the intervention of states was, particularly in the EU, but also globally, in strengthening the economic resilience of society and times of a crisis, but also the tremendous citizen efforts that were undertaken to fight against the pandemic. And now with the war in Ukraine, we see that war is perhaps the clearest state effort, but also we see a lot of autonomous organizing. We see it in the field of self-defense against the Russian aggression. We also see it in different types of humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, but also outside of Ukraine, for example, in how several societies in Europe, perhaps in particular Poland, have organized around citizens to host the refugees coming from freeing Ukraine. And I think that this definitely relates to energy questions. The movement to liberate Europe from dependency on fossil fuels from Russia is led by both institutions and social movements, institutions in terms of several governments pushing for faster action. Of course, there are several challenges on government level in different EU countries, but we also see that the changes, there are concrete changes that are happening, and it was not self-evident that they would have happened after the aggression that started on 24 February. But we also see a lot of citizens taking concrete measures to liberate us from these fossil fuels. We see that Extinction Rebellion, for example, is non-violently blocking imports of Russian fossil fuels in different countries, and this combination of institutions and autonomous organizing is a key feature of the energy transition. During the last session, you mentioned a really interesting quote you heard at the conference the other day. Could you please tell us more about the quote and your perception on it? Yeah, one of the officials of the European Green Party on the conference said that it was better that we will bought fossil fuels from 10 bad guys than instead of one bad guy. And I understand why she told that, but I think that it's a wrong position because we don't need to support bad guys at all. Because in Belarus in 2020, protests were attacked by police, by Czech flashing grenades, and European shockers and so on and so forth. So they got it when Lukashenko was one of 10 bad guys, but not one bad guy. And when it needed, it used it to start an aggression war, or aggressive war, or start a war with his own people. And what can Europe do with steps in European implement in order to ensure a just and smooth transition from the 10 bad guys to one bad guy to no bad guys at all? Are there any things we can do to secure that? Yes, we should do with bad guys only on our special demands, not by oil. Just by oil, just do economic trade, but by oil or fossils and so on and so forth with political demands and economical demands and social demands. You not just do economic things with the dictators who want this economic collaboration. Thank you very much. Do you think that more energy democracy automatically leads to faster decarbonisation in the proofs, the social world being? Energy, as during the session it was mentioned, and I very much agree on that, the energy we consume really defines the lives we are living in. There are many aspects of it. If we are using coal as an energy source for electricity or for heating or whatever, then we are living in a very bad life. We have miners who are working in very bad conditions and then we have polluted air and we have problems with the health and we have a lot of problems. But at the same time, the biggest problem is also this energy dependence and somehow European countries, even after this red flag on which we have been talking about, managed to become dependent on the Russian gas and oil. They managed to do that, which they could have very easily avoided. So on the one hand we have these bad life conditions due to energy we are using and on the other hand we have this energy dependence on a foreign country, which is not just a foreign country, it's an authoritarian country that has a very imperial ambitions that is using energy as a political tool. And we have seen that very clearly in the last month but also in the last decades, it just cut down gas to Georgia in 2006 and several people had died because of that. It cut down gas to two other European nations sometimes and you just should not have done that. So you have the energy dependence and you have this bad life quality if you are dependent on air fossils. Energy is perhaps the single most important issue in one's minds. Rising costs, potential shortages and even power cuts as well as the prospect of millions of households being left to endure a very hard winter, paint a very bleak picture. The issue poses major existential challenges for many countries with repercussions on the economy, security, trade and foreign relations. Although we have seen steps towards a renewable energy transition and these have accelerated, it's also important to note how this transition is being implemented in social and environmental terms. Are we moving towards a more decentralized, sustainable system where citizens play an active role and where energy is considered a common good or is this just another opportunity for corporate power grabbing and greenwashing? How can we avoid being at the mercy of authoritarian governments that use energy as a tool for geopolitical ends? Can we ultimately divest as quickly as possible from fossil fuels and fossil fuel extraction? What measures should be put in place so that this energy transition is truly green? Do you think we're all equal against the energy crisis? Everyone is affected from the energy crisis but of course the most vulnerable ones are the ones that are affected more. Like if you're already an energy poor family then of course it's more difficult for you. If you have like tons of money and you're a big investor then you get hit but the effect is not that massive on you. The sad part is that this crisis is going on for so long and we haven't seen any solutions to that. The consumers actually are the ones that are paying for it through their bills, through their subsidies that government is giving away through their products actually because the energy prices rising means that every product gets even more expensive as well. So it's a domino effect kind of. If we switch to collective schemes and energy community system then we will see these situations fading away in a way something like that. What steps should they use according to your opinion implement in order to ensure just energy transition after the embargo of fossil fuels? One important step that needs to be undertaken is that we need to recognize our structural problems in particular the role of the fossil lobby in policymaking on ecological questions on national level, on EU level in the realm of UN climate negotiations we need to talk about how problematic it is that policy makers in Europe have had, some still have their hands in the pockets of the fossil companies that are not advocating for policies in the common good but clearly in favor of the profits of their shareholders and then take the consequences of that how do we isolate such vested interests from decision making for the common interest. Secondly, I think that it's crucial that the EU but also any other public institutions empower citizens, municipalities different types of public institutions businesses, trade unions basically everyone who has an urge to do something when they see that there is a crisis to have the means and the knowledge to be a part of the transition the social and ecological transition to know what to do and to make it very easy for people to find other people to do it together with because this is not a transition that will be only led from the top quite the contrary, it's a transition that in order for it to succeed big parts of our societies need to be an active part of it it's clear that one size doesn't fit all it's complicated to list concrete measures for what could work and what we should avoid and I think that it starts with an honest power analysis of the status quo and then different steps that have as a name to empower people and we should also recognize that we for example in green parties we also don't know right now for example what are the actions we as green parties or citizens should be undertaking in near future what citizens want to do there's a lot of very important conversations to have around this question and it's a commitment from the European Greens to make sure that we create those spaces where citizens can join these conversations and that we can create this transition together I do think that the energy transition is going to be the key also for democratization because well we have this very famous oil curse right and if you check the list of the countries who are that are in rich oil countries in rich oil and gas countries most of them are very autocratic most of them are very authoritarian most of them are very equal like Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Qatar you have a lot of Azerbaijan in Europe this is also a big thing I mean and it's very centralized so and it's very very much around the power so energy transition can really contribute to the democratization itself but at the same time it will be also important to not just replace gas and oil with wind farms which are going to be in the same system but to have this more democratic way of deciding on the energy we talked about the energy cooperatives we talked about local communities that can own the energy it's not a centralized system where one ministry is managing all the power but there is local communities that have their own power one wind farm to every village and the big wind farm near the city so it's much more decentralized infrastructure it needs political win it needs money and in this transition period as you said the social aspect should not be left out because I mean we have seen that when wannabe greens, let's say like that do green stuff in quote marks they don't do that well Macron policy of rising full prices in France ended up with Gilles Lejeune because it was completely ignoring the social aspect of this energy transition so we as the greens we talked about the energy transition per se but we are not keen about the just transition because it's the whole process we have to while we are switching from dirty energy we have to also switch from this dirty politics and this dirty way of living on this planet so while we are transitioning we should make sure that we don't leave anyone behind because of well our values as well because we live in a just society we live in social equality, we live on all this social justice but at the same time we also pragmatically because they are going to have a black lash if because of your policies which are raising prices on fuels and people are still dependent on fuels and then you don't don't intervene as a state and you leave everything for the markets well market aim is to profit and the market will never really be very social unless you have a social state that markets is also not just profiting but also benefitting the society as such so it is very important that we don't leave anyone behind because there will be a black lash if the policy will be designed in a way that will only benefit the few, it's not the many so that is the crucial and that's why we nowadays and it also I think very briefly goes back to the first question we talked about the global landscape nowadays the climate and the energy is something that everybody talks about conservatives talk about it liberals are talking about it even far right is talking about it far left but the difference is that we as the greens to challenge the right we can say that well first of all we really do deliver the green transition but also we deliver in a way that we don't leave anyone behind but to challenge the far left is a very crucial aspect of it but we really deliver the change and we are seeing I mean the green side in government in many countries and we are seeing how it is possible the green transition is possible we just need political will and well the green is in power for that yesterday you held a very interesting workshop about the difficulties one in phase one establishing and communicating the idea of energy communities in your experience what was the biggest difficulty you had to overcome in order to first establish hyperion from natural and then electron, hyperion are different entities Electra is a social enterprise that is working for many years now Hyperion is an energy community which has 35 members at the moment and we will grow up to 140 by the end of this year so hyperion faced a lot of barriers starting we were one of the first communities registered and it was a brand new framework no one knew how to register on an energy community and it was frustrating at the start but I think one of the main barriers was the grid space the low voltage system network is actually full in many regions in Greece which creates a huge problem for energy communities which want to just build a small solar part or a small infrastructure because there is no available space it can be solved by upgrading the system it can also be solved by going for even bigger project so you can move out of the low voltage network but I think this was the most difficult part for us other than that we've heard lots of people struggling with finding the finances to start the community we've heard about the services not working very well like you go to a public service and they tell you oh no this is not our responsibility but it is so we do not even have trained employees to empower and enable these kinds of projects I think it's maturing nowadays and it's going to be even easier in the future we already see lots of differences from like four years ago and now and it's improving so I'm only optimistic you've been listening to part two of the future of Eastern Europe and EcoDemocracy a full part podcast special made possible by the Green European Foundation and the Green Institute of Greece