1. Can you explain, in a few words, what your work is about?
My main research has to do with electricity distribution networks, in particular their operation and protection. Through this research, however, I have come to deal with more specific issues, such as the demand side of an electricity system, i.e. the consumers.
Thus, my research is also concerned with what is called demand side management, which has to do with analysing the behaviour of consumers and then trying to change that behaviour so that the networks operate in a more efficient way. For example, consider that consumers traditionally do not know anything about the condition of the grid, they just use electrical appliances and expect the grid to provide the required energy. This means however, that we must have an excessive capacity of generation to deal with peaks in energy demand and any operational problem that may arise. With demand side management, the consumers are notified about the grid status, and we can use that to shift their electricity usage to avoid demand peaks instead of dealing with them, while we also have an additional tool to overcome operational problems.
Having worked on this subject for years and believing that it could be one of the solutions to the energy transition, I eventually came to realize that I was making a mistake, as I was trying to offer technological solutions to a problem (the energy transition) that is fundamentally not technological but political. So now, I am at the point where I am trying to introduce this factor into my research.
2. Why do you think the energy transition is raising a political issue rather than a technological one ?
In the course of my research, I have been repeatedly confronted with a particular pattern, whereby we have a very good technological solution for the energy transition, which we are implementing in a very bad political way. The term “political” here does not refer exclusively to the political decisions that get us there, but rather to the socio-economic context in which those decisions are made, which is capitalism.
When we design solutions for a clean energy transition, we can have many goals in our minds: we can aim at protecting the environment, at reducing social inequalities, or we can aim at maximising monetary profits. In the end, the latter is the only thing we do. All our solutions right now are implemented focusing on the maximisation of monetary profit and this leads us in the wrong direction.
To really tackle the climate crisis, we need to take into account the issue of social equality, which is also officially part of the European Green Deal, through the ‘no person and no place left behind’ motto. We also need to preserve the biodiversity. An important condition for that is the conservation of land use, which is often correctly translated as the need to preserve forests, but it also goes beyond that. My opinion on this matter is that we should simply stop thinking of the environment as a set of resources that are at our disposal to extract value.
Indeed, considering the environment as a resource and prioritising profit maximisation over other socio-environmental objectives leads us to implement renewable energies in a wrong way. For instance, wind turbines, which are one of the best solutions we have today, are built by private capital on mountains tops that were, until recently, protected from human exploitation. In these conditions, the environmental damages are inevitable.
At the same time, the opinion of local communities is considered negligible compared to the potential for value creation, with the result that their reactions (i.e. protests against renewable energy projects) are met by repression. And this is a dangerous path because it can create negative connotations in these local communities, as they end up associating what happens to them with the existence of wind turbines and not with the economical investments that this repression is actually protecting.
3. What are the most important technical issues raised by renewable energy sources?
The operation of the grid. That’s the biggest problem. Our power grids are vast. It’s extremely difficult in terms of resources, in terms of cost, to update them. They were built to support the traditional system: a centralised production through big power plants with a unidirectional power flow, that means electrical energy flowing only towards the grid demand side. With renewable energy sources, we have lots of production sites connected to the demand side of the grid, so there is a bi-directional flow of energy, e.g. energy may flow towards or from the demand side, according to the production/consumption conditions. However, the demand side of the grid is built in traditional power systems only based on the required consumption, i.e. it can support limited flow of electrical energy. If we want it to support substantial energy production we have to upgrade it, and this comes with a high cost.
But that is only partly a technological problem. In the end, it is a political decision. The State makes it easier for big scale projects to happen and then there is no more space on the grid for small community led projects. The thing is that renewable energy is a perfect solution to provide power to local territories. It is not a type of energy that is made to travel long distance, because it is lost along the way, converted into heat. Sending photovoltaic energy from Greece to Northern countries for instance would be ineffective as we would have great power losses. But it is also socially unacceptable: for instance, grabbing land that could be used to solve problems of the local agriculture to produce energy and send it to another country, only because it will maximise profit, and forcing this solution politically, is the wrong path for the transition.
4. Do you think there is a connection between the way we are politically organised and the way energy production and distribution is working?
Renewable energy could support the greatest part of a small community’s energy needs. That would perhaps need more effort and resources for a city like Thessaloniki, but it could easily be implemented for a smaller community. This would provide a certain independence to these communities. The best thing that could happen in my opinion is that people would come together to build a bottom-up organisation in order to satisfy their needs. This could start on a small-scale but I am afraid that if it spreads and starts to go against the dominant narrative of profit maximisation, it will face repression.
5. As you are working on demand side management, do you think that individual consumption is the problem?
Individual consumption is never the problem. This is a convenient narrative used to drive the subject away from the elephant in the room, the real problem, which is the required energy consumption to support a false narrative of constant growth. As long as we stick to this narrative, the Energy Transition will not come. So it’s not really a matter of debating individual consumption versus the distribution of energy consumption between citizens, agriculture and the industry, but rather a matter of understanding that we urgently need to change the dominant socio-economic framework which relies on constant growth.
Interestingly enough, in the end, this comprehension will result in a change in our collective behaviour with respect to energy consumption, and thus also in a change in our individual consumption. This is also inevitable. This however must be a procedure starting with the abolition of the constant growth narrative, not an approach relying only on individual responsibility. Through this, we will finally understand as societies that we need solutions as photovoltaic plants and wind turbine farms and demand side management, and that the real problem was always their implementation through the lens of constant growth, combined with repression for all people standing critically against this narrative.