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Citizens stop attending participation meetings dominated by the loudest voice in the village. Tenants stop lodging complaints when they no longer believe anyone is listening. The energy transition assumes a dialogue that, in many places, has already broken down. The institutions able to repair it, the mediator who steps in before conflict escalates and the ombudsman who steps in after the damage is done, remain treated as peripheral services. Urszula Papajak is a newly certified mediator for infrastructure and energy transition projects, with years of work on citizen energy and decentralised energy systems. She works on conflict at three layers: boards, teams, and whole villages facing a wind or PV project. In this episode, Ula also turns the questions back on me, on my years with the energy ombudsman and on the research behind our book on access to justice for vulnerable consumers. We discuss: Why democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each otherHow meeting structures that reward interruption push thoughtful, constructive voices out of the roomWho calls in a mediator, and why acknowledging conflict still carries a stigmaWhy people facing energy poverty rarely seek the redress they are entitled toLegal versus fair, nice versus empatheticWhy conflict competence grows only through human interaction, and why AI carries no accountabilityA conversation about trust as infrastructure, built through agency, empathy, accountability and belonging. Reference: Access to Justice for Vulnerable and Energy-Poor Consumers: Just Energy? (2021) Listen also to the episode with Dr Naomi Creutzfeldt and Dr Chris Gill. Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Markets do not correct themselves simply because a problem becomes visible. Correction usually needs an actor with a legal mandate, the evidence to support a claim, and enough independence to make companies and regulators respond. In Great Britain, that actor has held authority in energy and postal services for years, and now argues for extending the model into housing, telecoms, water, and financial services. Tom Lowe leads the energy networks and systems team at Citizens Advice, the statutory consumer advocate for domestic, small business, and heat network consumers in Great Britain. Sixteen years across energy suppliers, trade associations, regulators, and consumer advocacy inform his argument that a legal mandate, rather than goodwill, is what makes a market answerable to the people it serves. In this conversation: Why a statutory mandate changes how companies and regulators respond to a consumer body, compared with a voluntary or campaigning oneThe fifteen year path from identifying a problem with energy brokers to direct regulation by OfgemThe case made in Building Better Markets for extending the model into housing, telecoms, water, and financial servicesHow the advocate function is funded through an industry levy, and what protects that funding from becoming a dependency on the sector it holds accountableWhat an EU member state would need in place to replicate the model beyond the United KingdomThe conversation returns to a question that outlives any single sector: what a market owes the people who cannot easily walk away from it, and who holds the mandate to make sure it delivers. Energ'Ethic, with Marine Cornelis of Next Energy Consumer: the energy transition examined through the people it touches and the systems that govern it. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Some of the most consequential facts about an energy system never appear on a policy dashboard: whether an 85-year-old can read her own bill, whether she knows help exists, whether she trusts the voice on the phone enough to answer it. Nina Campbell, Global Energy Lead at Consumers International, led the Blueprint for Inclusive Energy Services, the report examining a liberalised, choice-based energy market from the perspective of Italians aged 75 and over. Marine co-authored the Blueprint and brings that collaboration into this conversation on trust, exclusion, and who a market is actually built for. In this episode:– Why Consumers International moved away from "vulnerable consumer" toward "energy hardship," and what that shift changes about people's willingness to ask for help– The loyalty premium: why discovering you paid more for staying put damages trust more deeply than a plainly bad deal– The invisible labour of carers, 16% of Italians in a caregiving role around energy, mostly women over 45, absorbing costs the system doesn't recognise– How the Blueprint's ten solutions took shape through direct collaboration with suppliers– What it would take to replicate this method for other consumer groups and other markets Reference: Blueprint for Inclusive Energy Services, Consumers International. (2026) Energ'Ethic, with Marine Cornelis of Next Energy Consumer: the energy transition examined through the people it touches and the systems that govern it. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

EUSEW turns 20. To mark it, Marine Cornelis sits down at the European Sustainable Energy Week with three people who have spent two decades inside EU energy policy: Thomas Nowak (heat pumps and buildings), Dušan Jakovljević (industrial energy efficiency) and Heike Winkler (offshore wind and the North Sea). The conversation treats EUSEW as a mirror. What it foregrounds, and what it sidelines, tracks whatever the Commission has in vogue, from hydrogen to carbon capture, often at the expense of people, consumers and energy poverty. What we get into: Why a convening that reflects priorities struggles to set them, and how limited slots turn the agenda into a zero-sum game Electrification as the efficient core of the system, and the "primary energy fallacy" still used against it Re-industrialisation, green hydrogen and jobs, and where a top-down European approach might have moved faster The single market's unfinished business, and the real cost of member-state deviations Why EUSEW keeps talking to the already-convinced, and how to bring member states and silos into the same room Parallel agendas, from the New European Bauhaus to energy poverty and citizen advisory hubs, and the risk of fragmentation A stocktake of what changed, what was harder than it should have been, and what a fair, socially accepted transition still demands.Energ'Ethic, with Marine Cornelis of Next Energy Consumer: the energy transition examined through the people it touches and the systems that govern it. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

You have more energy rights than you think, and the EU's Unlock Your Power campaign wants you to start using them. Most of us never think about our energy rights until a bill stops adding up or a supplier gets something wrong. That is the day those rights are tested in real life, and the day you find out whether they mean anything at all. Recorded live on launch day at EU Sustainable Energy Week, Marine speaks with Katarzyna Wolos of European Commission's DG Energy about Unlock Your Power, the European Commission's first awareness campaign on consumer energy rights. Built around ordinary life stages rather than legislation, it rests on one idea: the power to understand, choose and act is already yours. In this conversation: Why awareness is the weak link when only a third of Europeans say they fully understand their bill How the Citizens Energy Package becomes real: protection from disconnection, transparent billing, the right to join an energy community One message across three realities: cooling in Greece, heating in Czechia, shared solar in Spain Redress as the invisible right, and why knowing a door exists changes how people act Trust as a confident relationship with the unknown, and what that asks of institutions A companion to Ep "The Public Square" with Ewelina Hartstein, the episode sits where consumer rights, vulnerability and the credibility of EU energy policy meet. Campaign: Unlock Your Power: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/energy-consumers-and-prosumers/unlock-your-power_en Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Two years ago at EUSEW 2024, I called my vox pop episode "the dog who caught the bus." After years of running hard to define the European Green Deal, the EU had finally caught what it was chasing, and seemed unsure what to do next. I ended that episode saying it was time for extra communication efforts, starting with uncomfortable conversations. Two years on, this episode asks the same question from inside the institution. Ewelina Hartstein leads external communication at DG Energy and is one of the people responsible for staging EUSEW. We talk about the work behind the work: how DG Energy chooses what gets said, who gets to speak, and what remains off-stage at a moment when energy policy is entangled with affordability, security, and trust. What the conversation surfaces: Why "it comes from Brussels" is, in her own words, an expression she does not like What it means that EUSEW "brings together a community of people who are convinced," and how DG Energy thinks about engaging the unconverted The 20th anniversary edition's three-word theme (clean, secure, competitive) and the affordability dimension she insists belongs alongside them A live disagreement on whether the conversations EUSEW hosts are "uncomfortable" or "perfectly legitimate" The shift she names directly: energy moving from commodity to right, and a new EU awareness campaign on people's rights in energy launching at EUSEW A behind-the-scenes conversation released around EUSEW 2026 (9 to 11 June, Brussels and online). Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

The EU's energy transition contains clear legal obligations to prioritise vulnerable households. The EPBD requires financial incentives to target energy-poor households first. The Energy Efficiency Directive requires member states to make the best possible use of public funding for low-income consumers. And yet without binding targeting requirements, public money flows to middle-income and affluent groups by institutional default — not by accident, but by design. Anna Zsófia Bajomi, Energy Poverty Policy Officer at FEANTSA, traces the mechanism: post-financing schemes that assume households can pre-invest thousands of euros; eligibility criteria built around formal employment and debt-free status; CO₂ savings indicators easier to reach among better-off households. The outcome is predictable — and avoidable. In this episode: Why firewood users in Central and Eastern Europe remain invisible in EU statistics and crisis response, and how EU policy has perversely incentivised continued burning while punishing countries for the air pollution it causes How renovation schemes including France's MaPrimeRenov structurally exclude the poorest through co-contribution requirements The gap between EPBD and EED targeting obligations and what the MFF 2028–2034 actually delivers Why untargeted public subsidies crowd out private finance rather than leverage it New York State's 35% community benefit mandate as a governance reference for Europe References: FEANTSA · European Energy Poverty Handbook · Jacques Delors Institute · EPBD Art. 17(18) · EED Art. 24(3) · MaPrimeRenov · New York State Climate Act Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Energy poverty didn't exist as a concept in Spain when Marta García París first encountered it. Today, Ecoserveis runs one of the most cited local intervention models in Europe — built not on technical expertise alone, but on the conviction that citizens are the experts, and institutions exist to translate that expertise into action. This episode, originally released in 2021, marks the beginning of Energ'Ethic. We're replaying it at episode 100 because the questions it raises have only sharpened: who gets to access the energy transition, on what terms, and through whose knowledge? What this episode covers: How Ecoserveis came to define energy poverty in a Mediterranean context where the concept had no name — and what that process reveals about the limits of Northern European policy frameworks when applied elsewhere The Barcelona energy advice points: a public service model that pairs technical energy guidance with peer support from people who have themselves experienced vulnerability Why information access — not technology — remains the central barrier to an inclusive energy transition, and how targeted advice can unblock situations that financial support alone cannot The compounding effect of COVID-19 on energy vulnerability, particularly for households that shifted from workplace to home without the financial or physical infrastructure to absorb that change How European project networks enabled Ecoserveis to import, test, and ultimately export intervention models — including a peer-to-peer training approach now being scaled through the SWEET project Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Adrian Hiel set himself a goal in 2015: to fully electrify his own life. Ten years, a cargo bike, a fully insulated house he couldn't afford to put a heat pump in, and a 50,000-euro loan later — he's nearly there. He is also the first Director the Electrification Alliance has ever appointed, leading a coalition of ten European industry and advocacy organisations pushing for 35% electrification of final energy use by 2030. The contradiction is instructive. Because it maps the exact terrain he's navigating professionally. In this episode, we take stock of where the electrification agenda stands as a governance challenge. The technical and economic case is settled. What remains is the institutional question: does European policy have the architecture to act on it? We cover the EU tax structure that still prices electricity like a pollutant — four times more than gas in Belgium — because it was written when coal fired the grid. The Electrification Action Plan, now expected in June 2026, and what it must actually deliver beyond restatement of agreed targets. The Electrification Staircase framework, co-authored with Michael Liebreich and others, and what it implies about sequencing and governance. Rural households as the overlooked opportunity. And why, in Adrian's words, this has become a social transition as much as a technical one — requiring reassurance as much as regulation. Adrian also addresses the geopolitical reframe directly: the shift from climate argument to sovereignty argument, and why the US's transformation from energy importer to energy exporter has permanently changed the strategic calculus for Europe. The Electrification Alliance: electrification-alliance.eu Electrification Staircase: watts-next.eu Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Half of European households live in flats or rented homes. For a decade, the clean energy transition has passed them by — smart tariffs assume an EV, rooftop solar assumes a roof, home batteries assume a wall you can drill into. Ashley Grealish has spent his career on exactly this structural gap: first at Bboxx, building pay-as-you-go solar for half a million homes in rural East Africa; then at ev.energy, scaling smart EV charging while pushing it beyond premium vehicles; now at Windfall Energy, with a 2.5 kWh plug-in battery that arrives overnight, plugs into a standard socket, and does the rest itself. What this episode covers System design over product design. At Bboxx, the team realised that importing a standard television into an off-grid kit didn't work — the power draw was too high. The solution was to rethink everything: low-power 12V appliances, right-sized panels, circular lead-acid battery recovery. The same logic is inside the Windfall battery: don't adapt the user to the system. Redesign the system around the user. Affordability as architecture. Bboxx started at $400 upfront and couldn't reach most of the people it was built for. The shift to pay-as-you-go unlocked scale. Windfall is at the same first stage — £1,000 on pre-order, with a clear ambition toward zero upfront cost through energy supplier partnerships and, potentially, the UK Warm Homes Discount. Desirability is not optional. Ashley filled his flat with test batteries from the European market. One arrived at 45 kg on a crate. Others had loud fans and permanent blue indicator lights. None were designed to be lived with. His conclusion: a product no one wants in their home will not reach the people who need it most. Organisations mentioned: Bboxx · e.quinox (Imperial College) · GemFair · ev.energy · Windfall Energy · Warm Homes Discount (UK) Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

The EU's flexibility agenda promises to empower consumers. Demand-side response, dynamic tariffs, smart meters — the idea is that households can take control of their energy use and benefit from the transition. The evidence is less tidy. Vulnerable households are often willing to engage. What stops them is not reluctance — it is the architecture of their daily lives: caring responsibilities, health conditions, insecure housing, inflexible routines. When policy reads low participation as apathy, it designs for the wrong problem. Aurore Dudka is a researcher. She returns to Energ'Ethic with a systematic review of 66 empirical studies on demand-side response and energy-vulnerable households (Energy Research & Social Science, March 2026), and a co-authored analysis of gender and the energy transition (inGenere, January 2026). What this episode covers: Willingness vs. capacity. Vulnerable households want to participate in flexibility programmes. What constrains them is structural — rigid routines, limited technology access, low digital literacy, insecure tenure. Treating low uptake as disinterest produces schemes that exclude the households they were built for. Up to 20% higher bills — for those who can least absorb it. For sick and low-income households with inflexible consumption needs, poorly designed dynamic tariffs can increase energy bills by up to 20%. This is what happens when pricing mechanisms meet households whose energy use is not discretionary. No-harm guarantees exist as a design tool. They are not yet standard. The man decides. The woman adapts. Flexibility policy addresses households as single actors. Within households, someone takes the technology decision and someone else reorganises their daily life around it. The invisible labour of energy management falls disproportionately on women — and empowerment frameworks that ignore this redistribute burden, not agency. Stop designing for rationalistic consumers. Aurore's call to policymakers: stop thinking about citizens as rationalistic [sic] consumers who respond to price signals, and start thinking in terms of practice, time, and labour. The Citizens' Energy Package — which names farmers, carers, rural inhabitants and kindergartens as the citizens the transition must serve — opens this door. The design work to walk through it is still ahead.Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Music: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Women are already the primary decision-makers in household renovation and low-carbon upgrades. They manage timelines, handle budgets, research materials, anticipate health impacts, and carry the cognitive load of the entire process. The retrofit system, however, is not designed around them. In this episode, Marine Cornelis speaks with Ellora Coupe, founder of Her Own Space, about the structural gap between where retrofit happens and how it is designed. The conversation examines why trust, not technology, is the real barrier to household action, why peer-based learning models fill a gap that institutional tools cannot, and what it would take for funding and policy frameworks to account for the full complexity of human-centred change. This is a conversation about why retrofit moves slowly when it ignores who is already leading the work. 1. Trust as missing infrastructure. Retrofit faces a systemic trust deficit — not a communications problem, but a structural one. Households distrust contractors, product recommendations, and institutional schemes. Ellora argues that this trust erosion is the most underestimated obstacle to transition at scale. 2. The patronising design gap Women approaching retrofit are routinely not taken seriously as technical interlocutors. This is not incidental. It generates an invisible friction cost — eroded confidence, delayed decisions, abandoned projects — that no current scheme measures. 3. Community as a governance model Her Own Space is not a peer support forum, but a response to a specific governance failure: the loss of learning between individual retrofit journeys, and the incapacity of one-size-fits-all programmes to accommodate property diversity, budget variation, and different life stages. The community model absorbs complexity that institutional tools can't hold. 4. Sequencing without a single entry point Rather than prescribing a starting point, Her Own Space deliberately removes sequencing pressure. Members enter at any stage and learn across the full continuum of a retrofit journey. This challenges the design logic of most public-facing programmes, which rely on a single message reaching everyone at the same moment. 5. The early adopter argument — and what it means for policy Research cited in this episode suggests women adopt technology faster than men when it performs reliably, and abandon it faster when it does not. Designing for resilience is not the same as designing for uptake. 6. The agility gap in retrofit funding Innovation funding models are built around static, deliverable-defined outcomes. They can't accommodate iterative, community-embedded forms of innovation. Ellora argues this is a structural bias, and Her Own Space's membership model exists partly to avoid it.Energ' Ethic goes out every other week. Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Music: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

I installed balcony solar panels at home. They work. They reduce my electricity bill. They also revealed something structural. Solar is technically simple. Scaling it is not. In Vilnius, I explored what happens when decentralised energy meets multi-apartment governance. In Central and Eastern Europe, 60% of people live in multi-family buildings. These buildings concentrate energy poverty, fragmented ownership, tight budgets and collective decision-making. Technology is progressing: Panels are lighter. Batteries are modular. Sodium-ion storage is emerging as a lower-cost option. Lithuania already counts 170,000 consumer-generators, with 12% of electricity production in 2025 coming from consumers. And yet, every time solar approaches a multi-family building, coordination begins. Who carries liability?Who guarantees mounting safety?Who stays present when after-sales disappears? This episode explores: Why 50% neighbour approval for shared solar is a relational threshold, not a technical one How standards on power limits, mounting systems and documentation reduce uncertainty Why flexibility policy collapses without visibility and information symmetry How the revised EPBD and the upcoming Citizens Energy Package will depend on building-level coordination Multi-family buildings are the proving ground. If decentralised energy depends on exceptional motivation, scaling will fragment.If governance absorbs friction, trust accumulates. From plug and play to trust and repair, this is the real work of the energy transition. Energ' Ethic goes out every other week. Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

The Modernisation Fund is often treated as a technical financing tool. In reality, it is one of the most structural instruments in EU climate policy. In this episode, Marine Cornelis speaks with Morgan Henley, campaigner at CEE Bankwatch, about how the Modernisation Fund shapes energy systems in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on concrete examples from district heating, the conversation shows how funding design and governance choices lock in infrastructure pathways for decades. The episode examines why the Fund’s low political visibility enables priority drift, how limited scrutiny reinforces incumbent interests, and why these dynamics matter most in countries with constrained fiscal space. Rather than focusing on technologies, the discussion centres on power, accountability, and the long-term consequences of how climate money flows. This is a conversation about why climate credibility is built through governance, not announcements. Topics covered The Modernisation Fund as a structural EU instrument Governance gaps and low political visibility Priority drift and incumbent advantage District heating as a long-term system choice Why funding design determines transition outcomes CEE Bankwatch report on the Modernisation Fund (2026) Energ' Ethic goes out every other week. Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Europe has set ambitious targets for clean heating. Heat pumps are central to that strategy. Yet deployment continues to slow, especially in multi-apartment buildings and social housing. In this episode, Marine Cornelis explores why. Joined by Vladimir Gjorgievski and Louise Meister, the conversation moves beyond technology to examine how clean heating actually works in real buildings. Drawing on experiences from North Macedonia and Austria, the episode looks at: why heating and cooling must be planned together, how sector coupling translates into comfort, resilience, and bill stability, why upfront costs and risk allocation remain major barriers, and how business models and coordination determine success in collective housing. The discussion also reflects on lessons from contexts with limited gas infrastructure, the role of energy communities and flexibility, and what alignment means for EU and national policy frameworks. A grounded, systems-level conversation on scaling clean heating without shifting cost and risk onto residents. Energ' Ethic goes out every other week. Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at [email protected] Keep up to date with new episodes straight from your inbox Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedInMusic: I Need You Here - KamariusEdition: Podcast Media Factory  Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon © Next Energy Consumer, 2026 Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.