Webinar Summary: Efficient Municipalities — sponsored by PylonData
More than 1,300 people from the public and private sectors registered for the webinar on more efficient and renewable municipalities sponsored by PylonData
The webinar brought together highly recognized speakers. Joan Herrera (Mun. El Prat), Carme Garcia (Mun. Barcelona), Marta Morera (Mun. Rubí), Susana Laredo (Mun. El Prat) and Joaquín P. Mas Belso (Director of Enercoop) explained the initiatives that their administrations and organizations are putting in place to be more efficient, fight energy poverty and become greener.
Watch the video summary of the webinar (6 minutes) with the highlights from each speaker (English subtitles available).
Local governments will play a central role in decentralization and socio-economic reconstruction
The EU will approve € 1.6 Billion for the Post-COVID Social Protection & Social Reconstruction Plans. In this scenario, the municipalities will be the protagonists and must use these funds to implement local emergency pacts.
Carme García, councilor of the Horta-Guinardó district of the Barcelona city council, stressed the importance of making these local pacts in the key TEDJ (Just Ecological and Digital Transition), where digitization should be an element of distinct importance and transversal to all actions.
2020: Cheap renewable energy and a regulatory framework that places the citizen at the center
Very mature technology and a lot of sun, make renewable energy a competitive alternative in 2020. Additionally, the European regulatory framework is aligned with a distributed and democratic generation model that places citizens at the center. This is what Joan Herrera, ex-director of IDAE and director of the environment & energy department of the municipality of El Prat, told us.
Joan stressed that the current challenge is not technological, it is normative, hence the importance of transposing the approved directives before the end of 2020.
He ended his presentation commenting on three fundamental issues: the importance of giving instruments that help citizens take action, the urgent need to have good access (and management) to data, as other countries have, and the braking of collective self-consumption as there is still no regulatory framework introducing the dynamic distribution.
Having the data means at least 15% savings in utility costs
A third of the annual budget of a city council is allocated towards utility costs (i.e. electricity, heat, water). A very important figure that must be well controlled and managed.
Marta Morera, technical manager of the Rubí city council, pointed out that without data, management is not possible. Analyzing and managing data has been the key to the success of Rubí’s city council.
Marta insisted on the importance of the order of actions. We must start by taking actions that help municipalities save costs, continue investing in efficiency and finally install renewable energy. In this way the cost is transformed into investment abolishing the typical excuses of municipalities that attribute their inaction to not having enough resources & capital.
At the local level, Rubí is carrying out a number of actions along these steps, such as informing citizens on the best-suited electricity rate and power they need to contract (achieving savings of 15% on average), helping families dealing with energy poverty, and informing industries and citizens on the potential savings from the installation of self-consumption (solar) installations.
Throughout all these actions, relying on software like PylonData is offering critical support in their operations.
Who can help the consumers reduce their electricity bills, the most? The consumers themselves!
Joaquín P. Mas Belso, CEO of the Enercoop cooperative, presented the new approach of its energy cooperative towards energy communities, merging the cooperative model with collective self-consumption.
He also answered a question, typical among the cooperative members: how can I reduce my electricity bill? The answer was clear, “the price of energy is only 30% of the price consumers see in their bills. Therefore, it is very important for people to understand the potential impact from other actions, which can help them in further savings: optimizing electricity rates and power, shifting their consumption towards cheap hours, and finally self-consumption. “
Finally, Joaquín pointed out that tools like PylonData can play a very important role in facilitating the information and advice gateway to/from the consumer.
Energy poverty is increasing and municipalities are saturated
Susana Laredo, energy and climate change technician for the municipality of El Prat, explained that since 2019 they have been working to alleviate energy poverty and the figures do not stop growing. The structure of a city council is not prepared to deal with the volume of requests they receive and their services are becoming saturated.
In order to alleviate these problems and speed up the operations of the city council, El Prat has implemented a series of measures such as basic advisory points, one-stop shops with commercial operations and the use of PylonData software to optimize consumer contracts automatically.
Data access is the problem, but also, not the solution
Gerard Bel, CEO of PylonData, closed the webinar noting that access to data is a problem that makes operations difficult for many actors, but at the same time, it is not the solution. What really matters is analyzing the data and helping consumers to take decisions and action with simple, personalized services.
One last thing…
We are preparing a Whitepaper with more information on the initiatives of the municipalities and administrations in energy efficiency, energy poverty and renewable energy.
You can register here (and receive it once ready).
You can also download the Webinar presentations here.
More info about PylonData, here.
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