During the last edition of sustainable places in Nice last week, REACT has been present through presentations in workshops and the attendance of some of the project members from R2M, COMET and Teesside University.
Since the “Clean Energy Policy Statement for EU Islands” publication in 2017, European islands are becoming ambassadors for energy transition and efficient use of energy sources, and REACT is an important part of it with its three pilots implementing clean energy solutions in La Graciosa, Carloforte and Aran Island.
The workshop partners
During the Sustainable Places, 2022 workshop: “European Actions towards Geographical Island decarbonization” the sister projects (ISLANDER, ROBINSON, GIFT) and other projects with similar concerns (IANOS, INSULAE, NESOI, MAESHA) explored different topics related to pathways to achieve decarbonization, financing schemes and technical presentation and lessons learned from the projects and their pilot sites.
REACT Project EU participated in the workshop European Actions towards Geographical Island Decarbonisation with Dana Abi Ghanem from Teesside University whit a presentation on how we think about the users of demand response and the challenges of engaging with them in just ways. Also Tracey Crosbie (online) and Michael Short were there presenting a research on entitled “Measuring the Gap: a statistical approach for online evaluation and forecasting of human participation in Demand Response”. So there has been a good representation of the project results on the conference.
User engagement
All this without forgetting the user engagement. Without the participation of the user and community, the project’s path is only halfway completed. There are many questions to address and challenges to face when working in small islands where sometimes the information residents have about clean energy or energy communities is not fully understood. That is part of the tasks needed: during the workshop new approaches were presented that complement traditional residents’ engagement.
The innovation challengesIt was useful to learn about energy management challenges. Understand that cooperative energy saves costs and increases efficiency. Moreover, it was fascinating to learn that technological developments (new materials, adapted software, etc.) are a challenge but a breakthrough in innovation.
As always the gathering has been an excellent showcase from green energy projects and a great opportunity to come in contact with very interesting outcomes and fantastic professionals that stir our minds and encourage us to follow the path of clean energies research and innovation.
