The Loudest Voice in the Village | Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

Description

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 other
How meeting structures that reward interruption push thoughtful, constructive voices out of the room
Who calls in a mediator, and why acknowledging conflict still carries a stigma
Why people facing energy poverty rarely seek the redress they are entitled to
Legal versus fair, nice versus empathetic
Why conflict competence grows only through human interaction, and why AI carries no accountability

A 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 contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.

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Reach out to Marine Cornelis via BlueSky or LinkedIn
Music: I Need You Here - Kamarius
Edition: Podcast Media Factory

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Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
For me, democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other. So spaces where people can speak openly and safely are becoming very, very, very important, in my opinion. But sadly, we see that they are very rare.
Speaker #1
The energy transition assumes a dialogue that in many places is not happening. Citizens stop showing up to participation meetings dominated by the loudest voice in the village. Tenants stop lodging complaints when they don't believe anyone is listening. Boards leave conflicts to rot rather than name them. And the institutional muscle for repairing any of this, whether the mediator, the ombudsman, the facilitator who can make a quiet voice feel safe, is treated as an afterthought. rather than infrastructure. My guest today is Ursula Papayac, a newly certified mediator for infrastructure and energy transition projects working inside the renewable energy field. ULA sees conflict as three layers between board members, inside teams, and across whole villages confronting a wind or PV project they didn't fully choose. In a nutshell, Her job is helping diverse stakeholders groups to navigate complex dynamics and develop together sustainable solutions. When preparing this conversation, Ola asked me if she could turn the questions back on me on the years I spent working with the European Energy Ombudsman, on the book I wrote with colleagues about access to justice for vulnerable energy consumers, on what trust actually means once it starts to disappear. So this isn't quite an interview. It's more the conversation we owe each other when the dialogue around the energy transition itself looks shaky. Ola, welcome to the show.
Speaker #0
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the invitation. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker #1
Thank you so much, Ola. So you've been working for years on projects related to citizen energy and decentralized energy systems, translating complex technical and regulatory issues into more accessible formats. But recently you decided to add mediation training on top of that. Why are you running this mediation work as, I mean, it started as your pre-time project. And why this choice?
Speaker #0
I personally strongly believe that communities and be that sort of teams or people trying to develop a project or people living together. Those communities are the answer to the challenges we face today. Whether it's energy transition, democratic fatigue that a lot of us are experiencing at the moment, or growing polarization. Communities for me are the groups of people that can trust each other and therefore can also work together really well. But what we often forget somehow is these communities are not only harmony and not all the time. So irritation, annoyance and conflict itself, those are actually, you can call it a price for leaving and working together. And I have the feeling that we're rarely taught that and we're rarely taught how to deal with that friction. Very often the reaction is sort of either a retreat, silence, or in worse cases, even the escalation of the conflict, sometimes even the court case. And I really believe it's a real loss because conflict can be a great opportunity to better understand each other and to grow trust through difficult conversations. But, um... I have the feeling we are not taught how to go through that path. And I personally still deeply believe in dialogue, in our capacity to be honest with each other. Sometimes it's very uncomfortable.
Speaker #1
So what you're saying, if I can rephrase, is that we are not taught anymore or not taught at all to agree that we disagree. And the disagreement may feel too personal and therefore people tend to just... Avoid it, try to avoid it at all costs and the cost of it being democratic decisions. Right.
Speaker #0
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For me, democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other. So spaces where people can speak openly and safely are becoming very, very, very important, in my opinion. But sadly, we see that... but they're very rare. And yeah, I don't know, like I see a lot of sort of the dynamic of every disagreement becoming immediately a battlefield for people either sort of aggressively react to different opinions or withdraw completely and immediately. And neither of... those reactions is in my opinion healthy for the for the democratic system and um and this is not what we what we need at the moment no um yeah and i i do see it that sort of so the trust is built almost within surviving those those difficult conversations when when we can trust each other that we can have a difficult conversation that we can tell each other difficult things yeah This is how trust builds. And if you have strong communities like that, that are built on those conversations, and they know, okay, this is a safe place for me, you really see magic happening. Oh,
Speaker #1
yeah, And that's extremely interesting to have this proper conversation in the energy sector, because there is something like 90% of the world population who believe their government should do more on the climate. Much being. At the same time, they also feel completely alone, right? So they see maybe the tip of the iceberg, which is this kind of naysayer. And people will be saying like the nimbism, not in my backyard, or even the bananas, like build absolutely nothing, nothing at all near anyone. And that is, again, that's not the full part of the picture or of the conversation. No,
Speaker #0
exactly. I see it. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with your point. And I do have to say, I worry. I don't think the problem is that some people speak loudly and strong opinions or disagreements, as I said before, are not a problem, I don't think. The problem is and starts when sort of the spaces that we have are structured in a way that rewards the interruption, that rewards the aggression.
Speaker #1
Yeah, the bully.
Speaker #0
That's sort of, yeah. Yeah, that sort of puts people that are listening and that are curious, either the instructors are pushing them away. And I do see thoughtful and constructive people currently withdrawing. And that is a pity. Yeah, we're losing a lot of expertise. We lose a lot of wise opinions. And that is often a structure problem, in my opinion.
Speaker #1
And you're based in Germany, you mostly work in Germany, and you've been noticing this kind of bullying, trying to take over rooms. So what does this kind of process and your intervention as a mediator look like, specifically in an energy project setting? How do you start the conversation and rebuild this distrust?
Speaker #0
So broadly speaking, my job is to protect the spaces and to protect the structures that I was talking about. So creating conditions where quieter voices can stay present, when disagreements can exist without intimidation, first of all, and when people don't have to choose between silence or... saying openly what they think.
Speaker #1
So how does it look like?
Speaker #0
Yeah, it looks sort of differently in different cases. I work with board members, I work with small teams, I work with communities, but also with bigger groups that are working together on the participation structures of the energy projects. So the structure of it can look very differently. To sum it up, all of it is about sort of creating safe environments for... different opinions to exist and exist safely.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Then really magic happens because the expertise is normally in the room, which I experienced many times. And there is enough wisdom in the room. It's just often the structure that is not allowing for this wisdom to speak up.
Speaker #1
And who calls you in? Like who calls for a mediator to step in the room, whether it is a board, a team or a village? Who asks for a mediator to come in? Because I think it's extremely interesting and extremely relevant. But when you contacted me, I was even surprised that such a model existed, right? It looks extremely interesting and very absolutely relevant. And, you know, I work on... ESG, so Environmental, Social and Governance criteria at an international level. Community stakeholder engagement is really part of the backbone of sustainable development, right? But I had never heard of such practices in Europe. So when you contacted me, I was like, oh, yeah, I want to know more because I want to know how to make what you are sharing a best practice throughout the continent.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's really lovely to... It's really lovely to hear. I'm now very curious about your experience and I want to ask you more about it. But yeah, I'll do it after answering your question. So I have to admit that I wish I wouldn't have known that this institution exists earlier. Also because I wish I could have recommended it to some of the projects I was working on myself. The awareness that this is a possibility is still missing, in my opinion. And it's sort of a little similar to what I'm seeing now with, I kind of had the feeling that a couple of years ago, therapy was a little bit of a taboo topic. And a lot of people were sort of very afraid to even talk about it. And that is changing. That is changing. And I think that's a good thing. And it's similar with mediation. Sort of the acknowledging that you have a conflict, perhaps, is a big step. And it shouldn't be. As I'm saying, it's a price that we have to pay for strong and good relationships. It's a good thing. It's a good thing to have it. It's a safe space. It's honesty in its gist. So sometimes teams are able to do it by themselves and calling someone from outside doesn't mean that you can't do it by yourself or that you're giving up or that you're unable to deal with your own things. It just means you're getting help from a sort of a different perspective. Mediation and objectivity is very important. in mediation it's very important that there's someone who sees all the sides and it's not involved with the conflict and with the matter and so it's who calls me it's it's different people but what i what is very important for me is that that the sides of the both sides of the conflicts or if there are more than more that everyone wants to do. go for the process and really wants to do it together and it depends whether it's a smaller mediation or if it's a group and there are different processes for organizing it but it's very important that everyone is sort of willing to do it. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience as well because now I'm very curious. I have the feeling you you're very experienced with the topic as well. Can you say a little bit more about it?
Speaker #1
Yes. Someone recently told me and told other people that I was extremely good at making people talk. And that's exactly what I do with this podcast. So yeah, maybe that's just an extension of this special talent of mine. Yeah, so that's quite interesting. And thank you for asking, because right now you know me as the host of Energetic Podcast, maybe as the brain behind Next Energy Consumer, which is more of a policy consultancy, working with a lot of different clients on many different... topics that are all related to the social dimension of the energy transition. And it's really when I launched it back in 2018, it was really one of the first dealing exactly with this kind of angles. And one of the reasons why I decided to focus my company really on this angle is because the years before, for the previous six, seven, eight years. I had been in charge of the network of the Energy Ombudsman and working also with the Belgian Energy Ombudsman. So now I'm going to explain what an ombudsman is, apart from being a word that no one can really pronounce. And it's a gender neutral. So it's not, you don't say ombudswoman, it's bizarre because it's like a Nordic word or something. But basically, a numbersman is someone who intervenes when a person... or a legal person has a conflict with, let's say, a utility or maybe the administration. So in the case what I was dealing with, I was dealing with a person or a really legal person having issues with their energy supplier, energy utility, or maybe the distribution system operator, etc. And I was, that was extremely interesting for me because that was like the... The first time I stepped in, I realized that, you know, there were very big words in the energy sector that it would be delivering for everyone. And, you know, that you could monitor the consumption of your home very far away thanks to smart meter and so on. But exactly at the same time, in exactly the same reality, there were also people who couldn't pay for their energy bills and who were crying on the phone. And really, at the time, I was dealing in the morning with the people who are crying on the phones because their electricity had been shut down. And in the afternoon, I was at the European Commission and no one was really raising their voice saying, OK, this techno-centric approach is not fully delivering. There are a lot of things, subtleties that are complicated and that make people feel they don't belong. And the Ombudsman is here to help. So, you know. Years later, when I decided for many reasons to leave that space, I was approached by some researchers, Naomi Crutsfeld and Chris Gill. And they asked me to work on some research with them on access to justice and renewable energy consumers. And that really opened for me a full window, really, of trying to understand what was... behind and try to put a researcher hat on the work I was doing more as a practitioner. And I must say that these conversations and everything that I've seen in the first 10, 12 years of my career, they never left me. And to date, I still think and I still see and I still work with organizations that really, that have, that are acknowledging that. The success is only a positive outcome, it's not the same as success. And really, something that delivers doesn't mean that it delivers evenly and equally for everyone. So there's a lot of challenges that need resolving. And now I see more and more that are related to solar panels installation, or as you said, community energy project. Or even like larger project energy, like if you build solar panels in a forest or something, what the impact will be on the community and this kind of thing. So I started my company eight years ago, but I think that, you know, the work is only starting now. Like people are acknowledging now that there is this conflict and that not everybody is having the same voice. and had the same capacity to express this soundness.
Speaker #0
But you also, together with those researchers, do I remember it correctly that you wrote a book together? Yeah. True? Can you say a little bit more about it?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so it's called Juxt Energy, Access to Justice and Energy. I have it here. Access to Justice for Vulnerable and Energy for Consumers. So it's a collection of case studies from different countries. And basically, the starting point of this book and this research was that the people who lodged their complaints to the energy ombudsman are usually well-educated men in their 50s. It's probably the same kind you'll ask these as very informed and very loud in the kind of village conversation you may need, right? There are people who tend to be, let's say, on the... overprivileged layer of the population. Maybe they are not privileged in every sense of the terms, but they tend to be maybe the one who do not feel they can be belittled and who know their rights and know that the participation is possible, etc. So the book really tries to understand why you Do vulnerable and energy poor people do not complain? And one of the reasons is that they do not trust that anyone can help them. They are facing multiple difficulties at once, and they never feel heard, seen, represented. And they never feel that what they do can change anything in the process. You mentioned earlier that there are people who will just like quietly shut down and do not engage in the conflict because they feel that their voice is not going to be heard. Well, it's the same, except that in this case, the damage has already happened and they do not access the redress they should be entitled to by law. So it's extremely interesting to see that, you know, it's only... Between what you do, which is before, and what I used to do, which is in the after, there is this kind of infrastructure of lack of infrastructure of trust that is completely belittling a part of the population.
Speaker #0
Yeah, that and also really fascinating because it's also distorting the picture of reality, no? I mean, the volume and the confidence of some people. are making us i don't know how to describe it so i have the feeling that it's sort of the the volume and the confidence are not the same as the the wisdom and and sort of the diversity that we actually have in our society no yeah yeah and and actually sort of healthy communities and democracy they all depend on on the this this i mean we can we can use the the the notion that is being used perhaps too often but the freedom of speech now where it's um when it's not only a very small amount of people that that actually are using it but but sort of the the wider society and um yeah and it's uh and again we come back to to the question of trust yeah and and how to sort of What you speak about is this vacuum of sort of like, if you don't have a good structure, if you don't have like good structures that we try to create in mediation, when you almost build like one fundament, like when you build a structure where everyone sort of feels like they can stand up on their two feet and then they can actually speak up. if you don't have that then you have the power filling the vacuum in my opinion so it's like pure power is sort of getting through it and the problem of that is that we then have this this vision of of reality that this is our reality now yeah yeah it's not it's not it's just people being very loud but then we are not allowing rule.
Speaker #1
very wise voices to to speak up yeah yeah exactly exactly exactly it's not because you're loud or powerful or you look loud and and powerful that you are first that you're acting for the greater good and second that you are that you are wise right it's um yeah it's uh it's it's really interesting to see that you know also i mean given and... how complex the times are and far-right policymakers on all sides of the pond trying to project us in this kind of 1984 reality where trust is something that doesn't really be fathomable anymore, when they are actually little. infrastructures bit by bit that you can that you can put together right and you know something that i've um i got completely obsessed with in my in my career is that um this notion of trust because for for many people and many organizations trust is like yeah we need we need more trust in the energy sector we need people to trust us but they never put any kind of thought uh proper thoughts behind what it is. And there is another I really, really like whose name is Rachel Botsman. She's been inspiring me a lot. And for instance, she shows that one of her theories is that when you have this kind of, we all know this kind of psychological experience when a kid is being given a marshmallow and the kid is being told that if... he or she can wait 15 minutes, he will get another marshmallow, right? And she explains that basically the kid who will eat immediately the marshmallow, it's not because he or she is impatient, it's because the kid doesn't believe that a second marshmallow will come. So it's a question of trust. Does the kid actually trust that an adult or a figure of authority will be helping or will be... providing what he or she cared for to start with. And I find this kind of way of reading things super interesting because there are, of course, trade-offs and there are, of course, externalities, so impact and so on. But if the message only scratches the surface and never addresses the root of the mistrust, you don't You don't manage to go anywhere, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah, there's a really interesting article from, I think it's Odrika Binger and Sven Benson, if I'm not mistaken. I have to double check that. But they are looking into the topic of people sort of reacting to facts. End. then on the other hand, reacting to what they expect, what they fear, what they believe is going to happen. And I think that's another thing that I'm sort of experiencing a lot. It's expectations sort of emerge a lot from sort of the feelings and expectations and beliefs. And so you can have facts and you can cite. a lot of facts and a lot of promises. Yeah. But if you have in the room people who do not believe, and don't feel like this is true, then there's a big mismatch.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. And that's all the problem with the misinformation and disinformation, etc.
Speaker #0
Yeah. And I don't know if I should share. My worries, we have enough of them at the moment. But I do have to say I'm worried about what's happening with AI, for instance, what it does to us. Because what I see and what my experience is, is that this conflict competence and as I said before, it's necessary for strong teams. It's necessary for strong projects. It's the basis for it. And this competence, it grows through real interaction.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Like we learn it through human interactions.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And in sort of real human conversation. And no algorithmic agreement or sort of an opinion or beautifully formulated. piece of writing will give us this competence.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And we really have to get our hands dirty and get in and learn those competences. Yeah. And I really worry that we're heading the wrong direction when it comes to that.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
This is something we have to do. This is a doing. No theory. No reading up on it. Just sitting in this room and being uncomfortable with other human beings and giving them the feeling that you're there, that you're not leaving this room.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
I mean, it's also what you find with social media that really feeds you with only like as an echo chamber of really what your reality is. And yeah, I think that the AI also become extremely bespoke. So you will see only the part of that that echoes what you already feel and see. Right.
Speaker #1
So it's not a conversation.
Speaker #0
out.
Speaker #1
That is exactly the part that is sort of pulsing us into believing that we are having dialogue. No, that's not a dialogue. That's a machine that is programmed to make you feel like you're talking to someone who is agreeing with you. This machine is very skillful and can sound. like a person with a different opinion. But no, the purpose of it is to show you that it's agreeing with you.
Speaker #0
Yeah, but for me, there is one thing that makes the whole difference is that basically an AI is not accountable. Like it doesn't have any responsibility if anything goes wrong, right? It can help you make the decision. But at the end of the day, if you make a bad decision based on the AI, I mean, you look bad, not the AI. The AI doesn't really care about that, right? And accountability is completely part of, you know, the kind of infrastructure of trust. So I think that at the end of the day, if you outsource all of your judgment on it, that really shows your limit. But at the same time, if, I mean, they're extremely well- tailored to make you feel that you belong whereas many many human-made platforms never make you feel like you belong and that's also one of the challenges of what is necessary to to build trust right yeah i often try to and sort of explain it to to
Speaker #1
people i work with is is that it's not it's often confused what what we do is often confused with being nice ah yeah it's it's not about being nice it's actually often about sort of an enough safety for people to finally say what is really going on yeah if you want a good project if you want to be successful with your project you want to have people yeah that are that are willing to say hey maybe that's not a good idea maybe there is a better material yeah or the solution here and I heard and I read and I heard from someone else. that there's this new technical solution that we could use here. But you will have that. You will get that from other people with expertise that are willing to share that with you and be honest with you and say what's going on.
Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, with the work of Ombudsman, it's the difference between something that is legal, that a judge will assess as legal, and something that is there. In the sense that, is it socially fair? Is it having a kind of impact on the people who are least able to defend themselves, who are the smallest? Is it like it's really about because the law can be, of course, it can be right. But is the law fair? It's it's not. It's a completely different thing. yeah I think there's two elements I think being nice is not the same as being empathetic and being Right is not the same as being fair. And, you know, it's by really combining those things in practice that are profoundly human that you really see the difference of a human-made process and transaction. I mean, not a financial transaction, but like an exchange that makes a lot of, yeah, that makes the proper magic happen, as you said.
Speaker #1
Yeah. it's important to be respectful and it's important to have, you know, it's, yeah. Being nice. I meant sort of like, this is what we're getting from AI. AI is being nice to us.
Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #1
It's being nice to us within sort of the framework that we define. And then it's, and then it's being nice to us. And that's very helpful. That is helping us. I agree. But this is not getting us towards good and strong communities. and good and strong relationships that we need to actually move forward. And I do not believe it's going to get there quickly. I think sitting down and having those difficult conversations with other human beings, I've seen it, the magic happening. I can really tell you, it's really magical. Please,
Speaker #0
tell us when. Tell us one of your most magical stories.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so all the mediations are confidential. So I'm not willing to share any stories. But what I can say is you can see different opinions sitting in one room. And at the end of it, people saying it's okay. It's the complexity of the thing that we're currently dealing with. Therefore, it's okay for all of us to have different opinions because it's a complex issue. Again, coming back to the beginning of our conversation, if you're not allowing this, you'll have a very loud person who is simplifying throughout the whole thing and making the very complex problem or project very simple. And then proposing a very simple solution to it.
Speaker #0
Yeah, which is not going into anyone's favor except his.
Speaker #1
Yeah, and we have seen this happening so many times. And we are seeing this happening at the moment on so many different levels. And I am myself tired. So you have either that. Or you have an alternative and you can have, as I'm saying, people sitting in a room saying it's a complex project. This complexity, we are all aware of it. Let's try together to find the best solution for this complex project. And then you have brilliant solutions coming. And you have people who are, as I'm saying, not afraid to come up with ideas. And maybe that's not going to be the idea that we're going to work on, but it's going to inspire some other thinking. And that's the magic that I see happening. And of course, AI on some levels, it's helpful and it can be used. And I've seen it. being used very, very, very creatively. But at the end of it, it's the people that sit in this room that create this magic.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Or sometimes it's a virtual space, just like this podcast. So thank you so much, Ursula. I mean, we are, yeah. I mean, I really, really enjoyed this conversation and also your questions. It's great to have people like you fool really decide to get into this kind of uncomfortable conversations. I must say that these are also my favorite. You don't have to take them personally because your job is first to listen and be empathetic. And then it's the people who have agency, but it's also the institutions that must have the accountability behind, right? It's a process of, you know... Putting the people with diverging opinions in the same room, making sure their voice is heard, making sure they belong, and also making sure that at the end of the day, the decisions that were taken collectively are being respected. So it's really like circling what trust is really as an infrastructure. So, you know, I've really put it in four words. Like if you ever... listen to me make this kind of public statement don't don't don't tell me that i've already said it too much because i think we haven't heard it enough but hermit trust as an infrastructure works through agency empathy accountability and belonging i haven't found a nice acronym but because for this i mean it's a e a b so it's um it doesn't make any sense but let's uh that's fine that's human that's not perfect
Speaker #1
No, it doesn't have to be perfect. Thanks a lot for the conversation. It was really inspiring. Yeah, I also believe that we need the trust in the rooms. One invitation to everyone, don't be afraid to sort of get some help and support. It's really worth it. And thank you for your work, for your research, for your previous work, and also for this podcast. I'm a big fan. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Energetic explores the people, policies and institutions shaping Europe's and the world's energy transition. I am Marine Cornelis. If you found this conversation valuable, you can share it with colleagues working on housing, governance and consumer protection. You will find references and further reading in the show notes. Until next time.

About Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

Energ'Ethic asks the question most energy debates skip: who the transition is for. Hosted by Marine Cornelis, founder of Next Energy Consumer, each episode moves between frontline reality and the rooms where European energy policy is decided. The conversations follow one thread through energy, housing, digitalisation, and finance: whether the systems being built earn people's trust and improve their lives. For listeners, it offers a grounded guide to a transition too often told only in megawatts and money. For anyone weighing a collaboration, it shows how Next Energy Consumer reads the field.

For organisations and sponsors: Energ'Ethic offers partnership opportunities for organisations seeking to reach a senior, policy-literate audience. Partnerships are selective and editorially independent. Contact: contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

We discuss:

Why democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other
How meeting structures that reward interruption push thoughtful, constructive voices out of the room
Who calls in a mediator, and why acknowledging conflict still carries a stigma
Why people facing energy poverty rarely seek the redress they are entitled to
Legal versus fair, nice versus empathetic
Why conflict competence grows only through human interaction, and why AI carries no accountability

A 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.

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 LinkedIn
Music: I Need You Here - Kamarius
Edition: Podcast Media Factory

Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
For me, democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other. So spaces where people can speak openly and safely are becoming very, very, very important, in my opinion. But sadly, we see that they are very rare.
Speaker #1
The energy transition assumes a dialogue that in many places is not happening. Citizens stop showing up to participation meetings dominated by the loudest voice in the village. Tenants stop lodging complaints when they don't believe anyone is listening. Boards leave conflicts to rot rather than name them. And the institutional muscle for repairing any of this, whether the mediator, the ombudsman, the facilitator who can make a quiet voice feel safe, is treated as an afterthought. rather than infrastructure. My guest today is Ursula Papayac, a newly certified mediator for infrastructure and energy transition projects working inside the renewable energy field. ULA sees conflict as three layers between board members, inside teams, and across whole villages confronting a wind or PV project they didn't fully choose. In a nutshell, Her job is helping diverse stakeholders groups to navigate complex dynamics and develop together sustainable solutions. When preparing this conversation, Ola asked me if she could turn the questions back on me on the years I spent working with the European Energy Ombudsman, on the book I wrote with colleagues about access to justice for vulnerable energy consumers, on what trust actually means once it starts to disappear. So this isn't quite an interview. It's more the conversation we owe each other when the dialogue around the energy transition itself looks shaky. Ola, welcome to the show.
Speaker #0
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the invitation. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker #1
Thank you so much, Ola. So you've been working for years on projects related to citizen energy and decentralized energy systems, translating complex technical and regulatory issues into more accessible formats. But recently you decided to add mediation training on top of that. Why are you running this mediation work as, I mean, it started as your pre-time project. And why this choice?
Speaker #0
I personally strongly believe that communities and be that sort of teams or people trying to develop a project or people living together. Those communities are the answer to the challenges we face today. Whether it's energy transition, democratic fatigue that a lot of us are experiencing at the moment, or growing polarization. Communities for me are the groups of people that can trust each other and therefore can also work together really well. But what we often forget somehow is these communities are not only harmony and not all the time. So irritation, annoyance and conflict itself, those are actually, you can call it a price for leaving and working together. And I have the feeling that we're rarely taught that and we're rarely taught how to deal with that friction. Very often the reaction is sort of either a retreat, silence, or in worse cases, even the escalation of the conflict, sometimes even the court case. And I really believe it's a real loss because conflict can be a great opportunity to better understand each other and to grow trust through difficult conversations. But, um... I have the feeling we are not taught how to go through that path. And I personally still deeply believe in dialogue, in our capacity to be honest with each other. Sometimes it's very uncomfortable.
Speaker #1
So what you're saying, if I can rephrase, is that we are not taught anymore or not taught at all to agree that we disagree. And the disagreement may feel too personal and therefore people tend to just... Avoid it, try to avoid it at all costs and the cost of it being democratic decisions. Right.
Speaker #0
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For me, democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other. So spaces where people can speak openly and safely are becoming very, very, very important, in my opinion. But sadly, we see that... but they're very rare. And yeah, I don't know, like I see a lot of sort of the dynamic of every disagreement becoming immediately a battlefield for people either sort of aggressively react to different opinions or withdraw completely and immediately. And neither of... those reactions is in my opinion healthy for the for the democratic system and um and this is not what we what we need at the moment no um yeah and i i do see it that sort of so the trust is built almost within surviving those those difficult conversations when when we can trust each other that we can have a difficult conversation that we can tell each other difficult things yeah This is how trust builds. And if you have strong communities like that, that are built on those conversations, and they know, okay, this is a safe place for me, you really see magic happening. Oh,
Speaker #1
yeah, And that's extremely interesting to have this proper conversation in the energy sector, because there is something like 90% of the world population who believe their government should do more on the climate. Much being. At the same time, they also feel completely alone, right? So they see maybe the tip of the iceberg, which is this kind of naysayer. And people will be saying like the nimbism, not in my backyard, or even the bananas, like build absolutely nothing, nothing at all near anyone. And that is, again, that's not the full part of the picture or of the conversation. No,
Speaker #0
exactly. I see it. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with your point. And I do have to say, I worry. I don't think the problem is that some people speak loudly and strong opinions or disagreements, as I said before, are not a problem, I don't think. The problem is and starts when sort of the spaces that we have are structured in a way that rewards the interruption, that rewards the aggression.
Speaker #1
Yeah, the bully.
Speaker #0
That's sort of, yeah. Yeah, that sort of puts people that are listening and that are curious, either the instructors are pushing them away. And I do see thoughtful and constructive people currently withdrawing. And that is a pity. Yeah, we're losing a lot of expertise. We lose a lot of wise opinions. And that is often a structure problem, in my opinion.
Speaker #1
And you're based in Germany, you mostly work in Germany, and you've been noticing this kind of bullying, trying to take over rooms. So what does this kind of process and your intervention as a mediator look like, specifically in an energy project setting? How do you start the conversation and rebuild this distrust?
Speaker #0
So broadly speaking, my job is to protect the spaces and to protect the structures that I was talking about. So creating conditions where quieter voices can stay present, when disagreements can exist without intimidation, first of all, and when people don't have to choose between silence or... saying openly what they think.
Speaker #1
So how does it look like?
Speaker #0
Yeah, it looks sort of differently in different cases. I work with board members, I work with small teams, I work with communities, but also with bigger groups that are working together on the participation structures of the energy projects. So the structure of it can look very differently. To sum it up, all of it is about sort of creating safe environments for... different opinions to exist and exist safely.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Then really magic happens because the expertise is normally in the room, which I experienced many times. And there is enough wisdom in the room. It's just often the structure that is not allowing for this wisdom to speak up.
Speaker #1
And who calls you in? Like who calls for a mediator to step in the room, whether it is a board, a team or a village? Who asks for a mediator to come in? Because I think it's extremely interesting and extremely relevant. But when you contacted me, I was even surprised that such a model existed, right? It looks extremely interesting and very absolutely relevant. And, you know, I work on... ESG, so Environmental, Social and Governance criteria at an international level. Community stakeholder engagement is really part of the backbone of sustainable development, right? But I had never heard of such practices in Europe. So when you contacted me, I was like, oh, yeah, I want to know more because I want to know how to make what you are sharing a best practice throughout the continent.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's really lovely to... It's really lovely to hear. I'm now very curious about your experience and I want to ask you more about it. But yeah, I'll do it after answering your question. So I have to admit that I wish I wouldn't have known that this institution exists earlier. Also because I wish I could have recommended it to some of the projects I was working on myself. The awareness that this is a possibility is still missing, in my opinion. And it's sort of a little similar to what I'm seeing now with, I kind of had the feeling that a couple of years ago, therapy was a little bit of a taboo topic. And a lot of people were sort of very afraid to even talk about it. And that is changing. That is changing. And I think that's a good thing. And it's similar with mediation. Sort of the acknowledging that you have a conflict, perhaps, is a big step. And it shouldn't be. As I'm saying, it's a price that we have to pay for strong and good relationships. It's a good thing. It's a good thing to have it. It's a safe space. It's honesty in its gist. So sometimes teams are able to do it by themselves and calling someone from outside doesn't mean that you can't do it by yourself or that you're giving up or that you're unable to deal with your own things. It just means you're getting help from a sort of a different perspective. Mediation and objectivity is very important. in mediation it's very important that there's someone who sees all the sides and it's not involved with the conflict and with the matter and so it's who calls me it's it's different people but what i what is very important for me is that that the sides of the both sides of the conflicts or if there are more than more that everyone wants to do. go for the process and really wants to do it together and it depends whether it's a smaller mediation or if it's a group and there are different processes for organizing it but it's very important that everyone is sort of willing to do it. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience as well because now I'm very curious. I have the feeling you you're very experienced with the topic as well. Can you say a little bit more about it?
Speaker #1
Yes. Someone recently told me and told other people that I was extremely good at making people talk. And that's exactly what I do with this podcast. So yeah, maybe that's just an extension of this special talent of mine. Yeah, so that's quite interesting. And thank you for asking, because right now you know me as the host of Energetic Podcast, maybe as the brain behind Next Energy Consumer, which is more of a policy consultancy, working with a lot of different clients on many different... topics that are all related to the social dimension of the energy transition. And it's really when I launched it back in 2018, it was really one of the first dealing exactly with this kind of angles. And one of the reasons why I decided to focus my company really on this angle is because the years before, for the previous six, seven, eight years. I had been in charge of the network of the Energy Ombudsman and working also with the Belgian Energy Ombudsman. So now I'm going to explain what an ombudsman is, apart from being a word that no one can really pronounce. And it's a gender neutral. So it's not, you don't say ombudswoman, it's bizarre because it's like a Nordic word or something. But basically, a numbersman is someone who intervenes when a person... or a legal person has a conflict with, let's say, a utility or maybe the administration. So in the case what I was dealing with, I was dealing with a person or a really legal person having issues with their energy supplier, energy utility, or maybe the distribution system operator, etc. And I was, that was extremely interesting for me because that was like the... The first time I stepped in, I realized that, you know, there were very big words in the energy sector that it would be delivering for everyone. And, you know, that you could monitor the consumption of your home very far away thanks to smart meter and so on. But exactly at the same time, in exactly the same reality, there were also people who couldn't pay for their energy bills and who were crying on the phone. And really, at the time, I was dealing in the morning with the people who are crying on the phones because their electricity had been shut down. And in the afternoon, I was at the European Commission and no one was really raising their voice saying, OK, this techno-centric approach is not fully delivering. There are a lot of things, subtleties that are complicated and that make people feel they don't belong. And the Ombudsman is here to help. So, you know. Years later, when I decided for many reasons to leave that space, I was approached by some researchers, Naomi Crutsfeld and Chris Gill. And they asked me to work on some research with them on access to justice and renewable energy consumers. And that really opened for me a full window, really, of trying to understand what was... behind and try to put a researcher hat on the work I was doing more as a practitioner. And I must say that these conversations and everything that I've seen in the first 10, 12 years of my career, they never left me. And to date, I still think and I still see and I still work with organizations that really, that have, that are acknowledging that. The success is only a positive outcome, it's not the same as success. And really, something that delivers doesn't mean that it delivers evenly and equally for everyone. So there's a lot of challenges that need resolving. And now I see more and more that are related to solar panels installation, or as you said, community energy project. Or even like larger project energy, like if you build solar panels in a forest or something, what the impact will be on the community and this kind of thing. So I started my company eight years ago, but I think that, you know, the work is only starting now. Like people are acknowledging now that there is this conflict and that not everybody is having the same voice. and had the same capacity to express this soundness.
Speaker #0
But you also, together with those researchers, do I remember it correctly that you wrote a book together? Yeah. True? Can you say a little bit more about it?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so it's called Juxt Energy, Access to Justice and Energy. I have it here. Access to Justice for Vulnerable and Energy for Consumers. So it's a collection of case studies from different countries. And basically, the starting point of this book and this research was that the people who lodged their complaints to the energy ombudsman are usually well-educated men in their 50s. It's probably the same kind you'll ask these as very informed and very loud in the kind of village conversation you may need, right? There are people who tend to be, let's say, on the... overprivileged layer of the population. Maybe they are not privileged in every sense of the terms, but they tend to be maybe the one who do not feel they can be belittled and who know their rights and know that the participation is possible, etc. So the book really tries to understand why you Do vulnerable and energy poor people do not complain? And one of the reasons is that they do not trust that anyone can help them. They are facing multiple difficulties at once, and they never feel heard, seen, represented. And they never feel that what they do can change anything in the process. You mentioned earlier that there are people who will just like quietly shut down and do not engage in the conflict because they feel that their voice is not going to be heard. Well, it's the same, except that in this case, the damage has already happened and they do not access the redress they should be entitled to by law. So it's extremely interesting to see that, you know, it's only... Between what you do, which is before, and what I used to do, which is in the after, there is this kind of infrastructure of lack of infrastructure of trust that is completely belittling a part of the population.
Speaker #0
Yeah, that and also really fascinating because it's also distorting the picture of reality, no? I mean, the volume and the confidence of some people. are making us i don't know how to describe it so i have the feeling that it's sort of the the volume and the confidence are not the same as the the wisdom and and sort of the diversity that we actually have in our society no yeah yeah and and actually sort of healthy communities and democracy they all depend on on the this this i mean we can we can use the the the notion that is being used perhaps too often but the freedom of speech now where it's um when it's not only a very small amount of people that that actually are using it but but sort of the the wider society and um yeah and it's uh and again we come back to to the question of trust yeah and and how to sort of What you speak about is this vacuum of sort of like, if you don't have a good structure, if you don't have like good structures that we try to create in mediation, when you almost build like one fundament, like when you build a structure where everyone sort of feels like they can stand up on their two feet and then they can actually speak up. if you don't have that then you have the power filling the vacuum in my opinion so it's like pure power is sort of getting through it and the problem of that is that we then have this this vision of of reality that this is our reality now yeah yeah it's not it's not it's just people being very loud but then we are not allowing rule.
Speaker #1
very wise voices to to speak up yeah yeah exactly exactly exactly it's not because you're loud or powerful or you look loud and and powerful that you are first that you're acting for the greater good and second that you are that you are wise right it's um yeah it's uh it's it's really interesting to see that you know also i mean given and... how complex the times are and far-right policymakers on all sides of the pond trying to project us in this kind of 1984 reality where trust is something that doesn't really be fathomable anymore, when they are actually little. infrastructures bit by bit that you can that you can put together right and you know something that i've um i got completely obsessed with in my in my career is that um this notion of trust because for for many people and many organizations trust is like yeah we need we need more trust in the energy sector we need people to trust us but they never put any kind of thought uh proper thoughts behind what it is. And there is another I really, really like whose name is Rachel Botsman. She's been inspiring me a lot. And for instance, she shows that one of her theories is that when you have this kind of, we all know this kind of psychological experience when a kid is being given a marshmallow and the kid is being told that if... he or she can wait 15 minutes, he will get another marshmallow, right? And she explains that basically the kid who will eat immediately the marshmallow, it's not because he or she is impatient, it's because the kid doesn't believe that a second marshmallow will come. So it's a question of trust. Does the kid actually trust that an adult or a figure of authority will be helping or will be... providing what he or she cared for to start with. And I find this kind of way of reading things super interesting because there are, of course, trade-offs and there are, of course, externalities, so impact and so on. But if the message only scratches the surface and never addresses the root of the mistrust, you don't You don't manage to go anywhere, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah, there's a really interesting article from, I think it's Odrika Binger and Sven Benson, if I'm not mistaken. I have to double check that. But they are looking into the topic of people sort of reacting to facts. End. then on the other hand, reacting to what they expect, what they fear, what they believe is going to happen. And I think that's another thing that I'm sort of experiencing a lot. It's expectations sort of emerge a lot from sort of the feelings and expectations and beliefs. And so you can have facts and you can cite. a lot of facts and a lot of promises. Yeah. But if you have in the room people who do not believe, and don't feel like this is true, then there's a big mismatch.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. And that's all the problem with the misinformation and disinformation, etc.
Speaker #0
Yeah. And I don't know if I should share. My worries, we have enough of them at the moment. But I do have to say I'm worried about what's happening with AI, for instance, what it does to us. Because what I see and what my experience is, is that this conflict competence and as I said before, it's necessary for strong teams. It's necessary for strong projects. It's the basis for it. And this competence, it grows through real interaction.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Like we learn it through human interactions.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And in sort of real human conversation. And no algorithmic agreement or sort of an opinion or beautifully formulated. piece of writing will give us this competence.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And we really have to get our hands dirty and get in and learn those competences. Yeah. And I really worry that we're heading the wrong direction when it comes to that.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
This is something we have to do. This is a doing. No theory. No reading up on it. Just sitting in this room and being uncomfortable with other human beings and giving them the feeling that you're there, that you're not leaving this room.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
I mean, it's also what you find with social media that really feeds you with only like as an echo chamber of really what your reality is. And yeah, I think that the AI also become extremely bespoke. So you will see only the part of that that echoes what you already feel and see. Right.
Speaker #1
So it's not a conversation.
Speaker #0
out.
Speaker #1
That is exactly the part that is sort of pulsing us into believing that we are having dialogue. No, that's not a dialogue. That's a machine that is programmed to make you feel like you're talking to someone who is agreeing with you. This machine is very skillful and can sound. like a person with a different opinion. But no, the purpose of it is to show you that it's agreeing with you.
Speaker #0
Yeah, but for me, there is one thing that makes the whole difference is that basically an AI is not accountable. Like it doesn't have any responsibility if anything goes wrong, right? It can help you make the decision. But at the end of the day, if you make a bad decision based on the AI, I mean, you look bad, not the AI. The AI doesn't really care about that, right? And accountability is completely part of, you know, the kind of infrastructure of trust. So I think that at the end of the day, if you outsource all of your judgment on it, that really shows your limit. But at the same time, if, I mean, they're extremely well- tailored to make you feel that you belong whereas many many human-made platforms never make you feel like you belong and that's also one of the challenges of what is necessary to to build trust right yeah i often try to and sort of explain it to to
Speaker #1
people i work with is is that it's not it's often confused what what we do is often confused with being nice ah yeah it's it's not about being nice it's actually often about sort of an enough safety for people to finally say what is really going on yeah if you want a good project if you want to be successful with your project you want to have people yeah that are that are willing to say hey maybe that's not a good idea maybe there is a better material yeah or the solution here and I heard and I read and I heard from someone else. that there's this new technical solution that we could use here. But you will have that. You will get that from other people with expertise that are willing to share that with you and be honest with you and say what's going on.
Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, with the work of Ombudsman, it's the difference between something that is legal, that a judge will assess as legal, and something that is there. In the sense that, is it socially fair? Is it having a kind of impact on the people who are least able to defend themselves, who are the smallest? Is it like it's really about because the law can be, of course, it can be right. But is the law fair? It's it's not. It's a completely different thing. yeah I think there's two elements I think being nice is not the same as being empathetic and being Right is not the same as being fair. And, you know, it's by really combining those things in practice that are profoundly human that you really see the difference of a human-made process and transaction. I mean, not a financial transaction, but like an exchange that makes a lot of, yeah, that makes the proper magic happen, as you said.
Speaker #1
Yeah. it's important to be respectful and it's important to have, you know, it's, yeah. Being nice. I meant sort of like, this is what we're getting from AI. AI is being nice to us.
Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #1
It's being nice to us within sort of the framework that we define. And then it's, and then it's being nice to us. And that's very helpful. That is helping us. I agree. But this is not getting us towards good and strong communities. and good and strong relationships that we need to actually move forward. And I do not believe it's going to get there quickly. I think sitting down and having those difficult conversations with other human beings, I've seen it, the magic happening. I can really tell you, it's really magical. Please,
Speaker #0
tell us when. Tell us one of your most magical stories.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so all the mediations are confidential. So I'm not willing to share any stories. But what I can say is you can see different opinions sitting in one room. And at the end of it, people saying it's okay. It's the complexity of the thing that we're currently dealing with. Therefore, it's okay for all of us to have different opinions because it's a complex issue. Again, coming back to the beginning of our conversation, if you're not allowing this, you'll have a very loud person who is simplifying throughout the whole thing and making the very complex problem or project very simple. And then proposing a very simple solution to it.
Speaker #0
Yeah, which is not going into anyone's favor except his.
Speaker #1
Yeah, and we have seen this happening so many times. And we are seeing this happening at the moment on so many different levels. And I am myself tired. So you have either that. Or you have an alternative and you can have, as I'm saying, people sitting in a room saying it's a complex project. This complexity, we are all aware of it. Let's try together to find the best solution for this complex project. And then you have brilliant solutions coming. And you have people who are, as I'm saying, not afraid to come up with ideas. And maybe that's not going to be the idea that we're going to work on, but it's going to inspire some other thinking. And that's the magic that I see happening. And of course, AI on some levels, it's helpful and it can be used. And I've seen it. being used very, very, very creatively. But at the end of it, it's the people that sit in this room that create this magic.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Or sometimes it's a virtual space, just like this podcast. So thank you so much, Ursula. I mean, we are, yeah. I mean, I really, really enjoyed this conversation and also your questions. It's great to have people like you fool really decide to get into this kind of uncomfortable conversations. I must say that these are also my favorite. You don't have to take them personally because your job is first to listen and be empathetic. And then it's the people who have agency, but it's also the institutions that must have the accountability behind, right? It's a process of, you know... Putting the people with diverging opinions in the same room, making sure their voice is heard, making sure they belong, and also making sure that at the end of the day, the decisions that were taken collectively are being respected. So it's really like circling what trust is really as an infrastructure. So, you know, I've really put it in four words. Like if you ever... listen to me make this kind of public statement don't don't don't tell me that i've already said it too much because i think we haven't heard it enough but hermit trust as an infrastructure works through agency empathy accountability and belonging i haven't found a nice acronym but because for this i mean it's a e a b so it's um it doesn't make any sense but let's uh that's fine that's human that's not perfect
Speaker #1
No, it doesn't have to be perfect. Thanks a lot for the conversation. It was really inspiring. Yeah, I also believe that we need the trust in the rooms. One invitation to everyone, don't be afraid to sort of get some help and support. It's really worth it. And thank you for your work, for your research, for your previous work, and also for this podcast. I'm a big fan. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Energetic explores the people, policies and institutions shaping Europe's and the world's energy transition. I am Marine Cornelis. If you found this conversation valuable, you can share it with colleagues working on housing, governance and consumer protection. You will find references and further reading in the show notes. Until next time.

About Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

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About Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

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Description

We discuss:

Why democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other
How meeting structures that reward interruption push thoughtful, constructive voices out of the room
Who calls in a mediator, and why acknowledging conflict still carries a stigma
Why people facing energy poverty rarely seek the redress they are entitled to
Legal versus fair, nice versus empathetic
Why conflict competence grows only through human interaction, and why AI carries no accountability

A 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.

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 LinkedIn
Music: I Need You Here - Kamarius
Edition: Podcast Media Factory

Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
For me, democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other. So spaces where people can speak openly and safely are becoming very, very, very important, in my opinion. But sadly, we see that they are very rare.
Speaker #1
The energy transition assumes a dialogue that in many places is not happening. Citizens stop showing up to participation meetings dominated by the loudest voice in the village. Tenants stop lodging complaints when they don't believe anyone is listening. Boards leave conflicts to rot rather than name them. And the institutional muscle for repairing any of this, whether the mediator, the ombudsman, the facilitator who can make a quiet voice feel safe, is treated as an afterthought. rather than infrastructure. My guest today is Ursula Papayac, a newly certified mediator for infrastructure and energy transition projects working inside the renewable energy field. ULA sees conflict as three layers between board members, inside teams, and across whole villages confronting a wind or PV project they didn't fully choose. In a nutshell, Her job is helping diverse stakeholders groups to navigate complex dynamics and develop together sustainable solutions. When preparing this conversation, Ola asked me if she could turn the questions back on me on the years I spent working with the European Energy Ombudsman, on the book I wrote with colleagues about access to justice for vulnerable energy consumers, on what trust actually means once it starts to disappear. So this isn't quite an interview. It's more the conversation we owe each other when the dialogue around the energy transition itself looks shaky. Ola, welcome to the show.
Speaker #0
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the invitation. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker #1
Thank you so much, Ola. So you've been working for years on projects related to citizen energy and decentralized energy systems, translating complex technical and regulatory issues into more accessible formats. But recently you decided to add mediation training on top of that. Why are you running this mediation work as, I mean, it started as your pre-time project. And why this choice?
Speaker #0
I personally strongly believe that communities and be that sort of teams or people trying to develop a project or people living together. Those communities are the answer to the challenges we face today. Whether it's energy transition, democratic fatigue that a lot of us are experiencing at the moment, or growing polarization. Communities for me are the groups of people that can trust each other and therefore can also work together really well. But what we often forget somehow is these communities are not only harmony and not all the time. So irritation, annoyance and conflict itself, those are actually, you can call it a price for leaving and working together. And I have the feeling that we're rarely taught that and we're rarely taught how to deal with that friction. Very often the reaction is sort of either a retreat, silence, or in worse cases, even the escalation of the conflict, sometimes even the court case. And I really believe it's a real loss because conflict can be a great opportunity to better understand each other and to grow trust through difficult conversations. But, um... I have the feeling we are not taught how to go through that path. And I personally still deeply believe in dialogue, in our capacity to be honest with each other. Sometimes it's very uncomfortable.
Speaker #1
So what you're saying, if I can rephrase, is that we are not taught anymore or not taught at all to agree that we disagree. And the disagreement may feel too personal and therefore people tend to just... Avoid it, try to avoid it at all costs and the cost of it being democratic decisions. Right.
Speaker #0
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For me, democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other. So spaces where people can speak openly and safely are becoming very, very, very important, in my opinion. But sadly, we see that... but they're very rare. And yeah, I don't know, like I see a lot of sort of the dynamic of every disagreement becoming immediately a battlefield for people either sort of aggressively react to different opinions or withdraw completely and immediately. And neither of... those reactions is in my opinion healthy for the for the democratic system and um and this is not what we what we need at the moment no um yeah and i i do see it that sort of so the trust is built almost within surviving those those difficult conversations when when we can trust each other that we can have a difficult conversation that we can tell each other difficult things yeah This is how trust builds. And if you have strong communities like that, that are built on those conversations, and they know, okay, this is a safe place for me, you really see magic happening. Oh,
Speaker #1
yeah, And that's extremely interesting to have this proper conversation in the energy sector, because there is something like 90% of the world population who believe their government should do more on the climate. Much being. At the same time, they also feel completely alone, right? So they see maybe the tip of the iceberg, which is this kind of naysayer. And people will be saying like the nimbism, not in my backyard, or even the bananas, like build absolutely nothing, nothing at all near anyone. And that is, again, that's not the full part of the picture or of the conversation. No,
Speaker #0
exactly. I see it. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with your point. And I do have to say, I worry. I don't think the problem is that some people speak loudly and strong opinions or disagreements, as I said before, are not a problem, I don't think. The problem is and starts when sort of the spaces that we have are structured in a way that rewards the interruption, that rewards the aggression.
Speaker #1
Yeah, the bully.
Speaker #0
That's sort of, yeah. Yeah, that sort of puts people that are listening and that are curious, either the instructors are pushing them away. And I do see thoughtful and constructive people currently withdrawing. And that is a pity. Yeah, we're losing a lot of expertise. We lose a lot of wise opinions. And that is often a structure problem, in my opinion.
Speaker #1
And you're based in Germany, you mostly work in Germany, and you've been noticing this kind of bullying, trying to take over rooms. So what does this kind of process and your intervention as a mediator look like, specifically in an energy project setting? How do you start the conversation and rebuild this distrust?
Speaker #0
So broadly speaking, my job is to protect the spaces and to protect the structures that I was talking about. So creating conditions where quieter voices can stay present, when disagreements can exist without intimidation, first of all, and when people don't have to choose between silence or... saying openly what they think.
Speaker #1
So how does it look like?
Speaker #0
Yeah, it looks sort of differently in different cases. I work with board members, I work with small teams, I work with communities, but also with bigger groups that are working together on the participation structures of the energy projects. So the structure of it can look very differently. To sum it up, all of it is about sort of creating safe environments for... different opinions to exist and exist safely.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Then really magic happens because the expertise is normally in the room, which I experienced many times. And there is enough wisdom in the room. It's just often the structure that is not allowing for this wisdom to speak up.
Speaker #1
And who calls you in? Like who calls for a mediator to step in the room, whether it is a board, a team or a village? Who asks for a mediator to come in? Because I think it's extremely interesting and extremely relevant. But when you contacted me, I was even surprised that such a model existed, right? It looks extremely interesting and very absolutely relevant. And, you know, I work on... ESG, so Environmental, Social and Governance criteria at an international level. Community stakeholder engagement is really part of the backbone of sustainable development, right? But I had never heard of such practices in Europe. So when you contacted me, I was like, oh, yeah, I want to know more because I want to know how to make what you are sharing a best practice throughout the continent.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's really lovely to... It's really lovely to hear. I'm now very curious about your experience and I want to ask you more about it. But yeah, I'll do it after answering your question. So I have to admit that I wish I wouldn't have known that this institution exists earlier. Also because I wish I could have recommended it to some of the projects I was working on myself. The awareness that this is a possibility is still missing, in my opinion. And it's sort of a little similar to what I'm seeing now with, I kind of had the feeling that a couple of years ago, therapy was a little bit of a taboo topic. And a lot of people were sort of very afraid to even talk about it. And that is changing. That is changing. And I think that's a good thing. And it's similar with mediation. Sort of the acknowledging that you have a conflict, perhaps, is a big step. And it shouldn't be. As I'm saying, it's a price that we have to pay for strong and good relationships. It's a good thing. It's a good thing to have it. It's a safe space. It's honesty in its gist. So sometimes teams are able to do it by themselves and calling someone from outside doesn't mean that you can't do it by yourself or that you're giving up or that you're unable to deal with your own things. It just means you're getting help from a sort of a different perspective. Mediation and objectivity is very important. in mediation it's very important that there's someone who sees all the sides and it's not involved with the conflict and with the matter and so it's who calls me it's it's different people but what i what is very important for me is that that the sides of the both sides of the conflicts or if there are more than more that everyone wants to do. go for the process and really wants to do it together and it depends whether it's a smaller mediation or if it's a group and there are different processes for organizing it but it's very important that everyone is sort of willing to do it. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience as well because now I'm very curious. I have the feeling you you're very experienced with the topic as well. Can you say a little bit more about it?
Speaker #1
Yes. Someone recently told me and told other people that I was extremely good at making people talk. And that's exactly what I do with this podcast. So yeah, maybe that's just an extension of this special talent of mine. Yeah, so that's quite interesting. And thank you for asking, because right now you know me as the host of Energetic Podcast, maybe as the brain behind Next Energy Consumer, which is more of a policy consultancy, working with a lot of different clients on many different... topics that are all related to the social dimension of the energy transition. And it's really when I launched it back in 2018, it was really one of the first dealing exactly with this kind of angles. And one of the reasons why I decided to focus my company really on this angle is because the years before, for the previous six, seven, eight years. I had been in charge of the network of the Energy Ombudsman and working also with the Belgian Energy Ombudsman. So now I'm going to explain what an ombudsman is, apart from being a word that no one can really pronounce. And it's a gender neutral. So it's not, you don't say ombudswoman, it's bizarre because it's like a Nordic word or something. But basically, a numbersman is someone who intervenes when a person... or a legal person has a conflict with, let's say, a utility or maybe the administration. So in the case what I was dealing with, I was dealing with a person or a really legal person having issues with their energy supplier, energy utility, or maybe the distribution system operator, etc. And I was, that was extremely interesting for me because that was like the... The first time I stepped in, I realized that, you know, there were very big words in the energy sector that it would be delivering for everyone. And, you know, that you could monitor the consumption of your home very far away thanks to smart meter and so on. But exactly at the same time, in exactly the same reality, there were also people who couldn't pay for their energy bills and who were crying on the phone. And really, at the time, I was dealing in the morning with the people who are crying on the phones because their electricity had been shut down. And in the afternoon, I was at the European Commission and no one was really raising their voice saying, OK, this techno-centric approach is not fully delivering. There are a lot of things, subtleties that are complicated and that make people feel they don't belong. And the Ombudsman is here to help. So, you know. Years later, when I decided for many reasons to leave that space, I was approached by some researchers, Naomi Crutsfeld and Chris Gill. And they asked me to work on some research with them on access to justice and renewable energy consumers. And that really opened for me a full window, really, of trying to understand what was... behind and try to put a researcher hat on the work I was doing more as a practitioner. And I must say that these conversations and everything that I've seen in the first 10, 12 years of my career, they never left me. And to date, I still think and I still see and I still work with organizations that really, that have, that are acknowledging that. The success is only a positive outcome, it's not the same as success. And really, something that delivers doesn't mean that it delivers evenly and equally for everyone. So there's a lot of challenges that need resolving. And now I see more and more that are related to solar panels installation, or as you said, community energy project. Or even like larger project energy, like if you build solar panels in a forest or something, what the impact will be on the community and this kind of thing. So I started my company eight years ago, but I think that, you know, the work is only starting now. Like people are acknowledging now that there is this conflict and that not everybody is having the same voice. and had the same capacity to express this soundness.
Speaker #0
But you also, together with those researchers, do I remember it correctly that you wrote a book together? Yeah. True? Can you say a little bit more about it?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so it's called Juxt Energy, Access to Justice and Energy. I have it here. Access to Justice for Vulnerable and Energy for Consumers. So it's a collection of case studies from different countries. And basically, the starting point of this book and this research was that the people who lodged their complaints to the energy ombudsman are usually well-educated men in their 50s. It's probably the same kind you'll ask these as very informed and very loud in the kind of village conversation you may need, right? There are people who tend to be, let's say, on the... overprivileged layer of the population. Maybe they are not privileged in every sense of the terms, but they tend to be maybe the one who do not feel they can be belittled and who know their rights and know that the participation is possible, etc. So the book really tries to understand why you Do vulnerable and energy poor people do not complain? And one of the reasons is that they do not trust that anyone can help them. They are facing multiple difficulties at once, and they never feel heard, seen, represented. And they never feel that what they do can change anything in the process. You mentioned earlier that there are people who will just like quietly shut down and do not engage in the conflict because they feel that their voice is not going to be heard. Well, it's the same, except that in this case, the damage has already happened and they do not access the redress they should be entitled to by law. So it's extremely interesting to see that, you know, it's only... Between what you do, which is before, and what I used to do, which is in the after, there is this kind of infrastructure of lack of infrastructure of trust that is completely belittling a part of the population.
Speaker #0
Yeah, that and also really fascinating because it's also distorting the picture of reality, no? I mean, the volume and the confidence of some people. are making us i don't know how to describe it so i have the feeling that it's sort of the the volume and the confidence are not the same as the the wisdom and and sort of the diversity that we actually have in our society no yeah yeah and and actually sort of healthy communities and democracy they all depend on on the this this i mean we can we can use the the the notion that is being used perhaps too often but the freedom of speech now where it's um when it's not only a very small amount of people that that actually are using it but but sort of the the wider society and um yeah and it's uh and again we come back to to the question of trust yeah and and how to sort of What you speak about is this vacuum of sort of like, if you don't have a good structure, if you don't have like good structures that we try to create in mediation, when you almost build like one fundament, like when you build a structure where everyone sort of feels like they can stand up on their two feet and then they can actually speak up. if you don't have that then you have the power filling the vacuum in my opinion so it's like pure power is sort of getting through it and the problem of that is that we then have this this vision of of reality that this is our reality now yeah yeah it's not it's not it's just people being very loud but then we are not allowing rule.
Speaker #1
very wise voices to to speak up yeah yeah exactly exactly exactly it's not because you're loud or powerful or you look loud and and powerful that you are first that you're acting for the greater good and second that you are that you are wise right it's um yeah it's uh it's it's really interesting to see that you know also i mean given and... how complex the times are and far-right policymakers on all sides of the pond trying to project us in this kind of 1984 reality where trust is something that doesn't really be fathomable anymore, when they are actually little. infrastructures bit by bit that you can that you can put together right and you know something that i've um i got completely obsessed with in my in my career is that um this notion of trust because for for many people and many organizations trust is like yeah we need we need more trust in the energy sector we need people to trust us but they never put any kind of thought uh proper thoughts behind what it is. And there is another I really, really like whose name is Rachel Botsman. She's been inspiring me a lot. And for instance, she shows that one of her theories is that when you have this kind of, we all know this kind of psychological experience when a kid is being given a marshmallow and the kid is being told that if... he or she can wait 15 minutes, he will get another marshmallow, right? And she explains that basically the kid who will eat immediately the marshmallow, it's not because he or she is impatient, it's because the kid doesn't believe that a second marshmallow will come. So it's a question of trust. Does the kid actually trust that an adult or a figure of authority will be helping or will be... providing what he or she cared for to start with. And I find this kind of way of reading things super interesting because there are, of course, trade-offs and there are, of course, externalities, so impact and so on. But if the message only scratches the surface and never addresses the root of the mistrust, you don't You don't manage to go anywhere, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah, there's a really interesting article from, I think it's Odrika Binger and Sven Benson, if I'm not mistaken. I have to double check that. But they are looking into the topic of people sort of reacting to facts. End. then on the other hand, reacting to what they expect, what they fear, what they believe is going to happen. And I think that's another thing that I'm sort of experiencing a lot. It's expectations sort of emerge a lot from sort of the feelings and expectations and beliefs. And so you can have facts and you can cite. a lot of facts and a lot of promises. Yeah. But if you have in the room people who do not believe, and don't feel like this is true, then there's a big mismatch.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. And that's all the problem with the misinformation and disinformation, etc.
Speaker #0
Yeah. And I don't know if I should share. My worries, we have enough of them at the moment. But I do have to say I'm worried about what's happening with AI, for instance, what it does to us. Because what I see and what my experience is, is that this conflict competence and as I said before, it's necessary for strong teams. It's necessary for strong projects. It's the basis for it. And this competence, it grows through real interaction.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Like we learn it through human interactions.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And in sort of real human conversation. And no algorithmic agreement or sort of an opinion or beautifully formulated. piece of writing will give us this competence.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And we really have to get our hands dirty and get in and learn those competences. Yeah. And I really worry that we're heading the wrong direction when it comes to that.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
This is something we have to do. This is a doing. No theory. No reading up on it. Just sitting in this room and being uncomfortable with other human beings and giving them the feeling that you're there, that you're not leaving this room.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
I mean, it's also what you find with social media that really feeds you with only like as an echo chamber of really what your reality is. And yeah, I think that the AI also become extremely bespoke. So you will see only the part of that that echoes what you already feel and see. Right.
Speaker #1
So it's not a conversation.
Speaker #0
out.
Speaker #1
That is exactly the part that is sort of pulsing us into believing that we are having dialogue. No, that's not a dialogue. That's a machine that is programmed to make you feel like you're talking to someone who is agreeing with you. This machine is very skillful and can sound. like a person with a different opinion. But no, the purpose of it is to show you that it's agreeing with you.
Speaker #0
Yeah, but for me, there is one thing that makes the whole difference is that basically an AI is not accountable. Like it doesn't have any responsibility if anything goes wrong, right? It can help you make the decision. But at the end of the day, if you make a bad decision based on the AI, I mean, you look bad, not the AI. The AI doesn't really care about that, right? And accountability is completely part of, you know, the kind of infrastructure of trust. So I think that at the end of the day, if you outsource all of your judgment on it, that really shows your limit. But at the same time, if, I mean, they're extremely well- tailored to make you feel that you belong whereas many many human-made platforms never make you feel like you belong and that's also one of the challenges of what is necessary to to build trust right yeah i often try to and sort of explain it to to
Speaker #1
people i work with is is that it's not it's often confused what what we do is often confused with being nice ah yeah it's it's not about being nice it's actually often about sort of an enough safety for people to finally say what is really going on yeah if you want a good project if you want to be successful with your project you want to have people yeah that are that are willing to say hey maybe that's not a good idea maybe there is a better material yeah or the solution here and I heard and I read and I heard from someone else. that there's this new technical solution that we could use here. But you will have that. You will get that from other people with expertise that are willing to share that with you and be honest with you and say what's going on.
Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, with the work of Ombudsman, it's the difference between something that is legal, that a judge will assess as legal, and something that is there. In the sense that, is it socially fair? Is it having a kind of impact on the people who are least able to defend themselves, who are the smallest? Is it like it's really about because the law can be, of course, it can be right. But is the law fair? It's it's not. It's a completely different thing. yeah I think there's two elements I think being nice is not the same as being empathetic and being Right is not the same as being fair. And, you know, it's by really combining those things in practice that are profoundly human that you really see the difference of a human-made process and transaction. I mean, not a financial transaction, but like an exchange that makes a lot of, yeah, that makes the proper magic happen, as you said.
Speaker #1
Yeah. it's important to be respectful and it's important to have, you know, it's, yeah. Being nice. I meant sort of like, this is what we're getting from AI. AI is being nice to us.
Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #1
It's being nice to us within sort of the framework that we define. And then it's, and then it's being nice to us. And that's very helpful. That is helping us. I agree. But this is not getting us towards good and strong communities. and good and strong relationships that we need to actually move forward. And I do not believe it's going to get there quickly. I think sitting down and having those difficult conversations with other human beings, I've seen it, the magic happening. I can really tell you, it's really magical. Please,
Speaker #0
tell us when. Tell us one of your most magical stories.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so all the mediations are confidential. So I'm not willing to share any stories. But what I can say is you can see different opinions sitting in one room. And at the end of it, people saying it's okay. It's the complexity of the thing that we're currently dealing with. Therefore, it's okay for all of us to have different opinions because it's a complex issue. Again, coming back to the beginning of our conversation, if you're not allowing this, you'll have a very loud person who is simplifying throughout the whole thing and making the very complex problem or project very simple. And then proposing a very simple solution to it.
Speaker #0
Yeah, which is not going into anyone's favor except his.
Speaker #1
Yeah, and we have seen this happening so many times. And we are seeing this happening at the moment on so many different levels. And I am myself tired. So you have either that. Or you have an alternative and you can have, as I'm saying, people sitting in a room saying it's a complex project. This complexity, we are all aware of it. Let's try together to find the best solution for this complex project. And then you have brilliant solutions coming. And you have people who are, as I'm saying, not afraid to come up with ideas. And maybe that's not going to be the idea that we're going to work on, but it's going to inspire some other thinking. And that's the magic that I see happening. And of course, AI on some levels, it's helpful and it can be used. And I've seen it. being used very, very, very creatively. But at the end of it, it's the people that sit in this room that create this magic.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Or sometimes it's a virtual space, just like this podcast. So thank you so much, Ursula. I mean, we are, yeah. I mean, I really, really enjoyed this conversation and also your questions. It's great to have people like you fool really decide to get into this kind of uncomfortable conversations. I must say that these are also my favorite. You don't have to take them personally because your job is first to listen and be empathetic. And then it's the people who have agency, but it's also the institutions that must have the accountability behind, right? It's a process of, you know... Putting the people with diverging opinions in the same room, making sure their voice is heard, making sure they belong, and also making sure that at the end of the day, the decisions that were taken collectively are being respected. So it's really like circling what trust is really as an infrastructure. So, you know, I've really put it in four words. Like if you ever... listen to me make this kind of public statement don't don't don't tell me that i've already said it too much because i think we haven't heard it enough but hermit trust as an infrastructure works through agency empathy accountability and belonging i haven't found a nice acronym but because for this i mean it's a e a b so it's um it doesn't make any sense but let's uh that's fine that's human that's not perfect
Speaker #1
No, it doesn't have to be perfect. Thanks a lot for the conversation. It was really inspiring. Yeah, I also believe that we need the trust in the rooms. One invitation to everyone, don't be afraid to sort of get some help and support. It's really worth it. And thank you for your work, for your research, for your previous work, and also for this podcast. I'm a big fan. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Energetic explores the people, policies and institutions shaping Europe's and the world's energy transition. I am Marine Cornelis. If you found this conversation valuable, you can share it with colleagues working on housing, governance and consumer protection. You will find references and further reading in the show notes. Until next time.

About Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

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About Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

We discuss:

Why democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other
How meeting structures that reward interruption push thoughtful, constructive voices out of the room
Who calls in a mediator, and why acknowledging conflict still carries a stigma
Why people facing energy poverty rarely seek the redress they are entitled to
Legal versus fair, nice versus empathetic
Why conflict competence grows only through human interaction, and why AI carries no accountability

A 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.

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 LinkedIn
Music: I Need You Here - Kamarius
Edition: Podcast Media Factory

Support Energ'Ethic on Patreon

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
For me, democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other. So spaces where people can speak openly and safely are becoming very, very, very important, in my opinion. But sadly, we see that they are very rare.
Speaker #1
The energy transition assumes a dialogue that in many places is not happening. Citizens stop showing up to participation meetings dominated by the loudest voice in the village. Tenants stop lodging complaints when they don't believe anyone is listening. Boards leave conflicts to rot rather than name them. And the institutional muscle for repairing any of this, whether the mediator, the ombudsman, the facilitator who can make a quiet voice feel safe, is treated as an afterthought. rather than infrastructure. My guest today is Ursula Papayac, a newly certified mediator for infrastructure and energy transition projects working inside the renewable energy field. ULA sees conflict as three layers between board members, inside teams, and across whole villages confronting a wind or PV project they didn't fully choose. In a nutshell, Her job is helping diverse stakeholders groups to navigate complex dynamics and develop together sustainable solutions. When preparing this conversation, Ola asked me if she could turn the questions back on me on the years I spent working with the European Energy Ombudsman, on the book I wrote with colleagues about access to justice for vulnerable energy consumers, on what trust actually means once it starts to disappear. So this isn't quite an interview. It's more the conversation we owe each other when the dialogue around the energy transition itself looks shaky. Ola, welcome to the show.
Speaker #0
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the invitation. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker #1
Thank you so much, Ola. So you've been working for years on projects related to citizen energy and decentralized energy systems, translating complex technical and regulatory issues into more accessible formats. But recently you decided to add mediation training on top of that. Why are you running this mediation work as, I mean, it started as your pre-time project. And why this choice?
Speaker #0
I personally strongly believe that communities and be that sort of teams or people trying to develop a project or people living together. Those communities are the answer to the challenges we face today. Whether it's energy transition, democratic fatigue that a lot of us are experiencing at the moment, or growing polarization. Communities for me are the groups of people that can trust each other and therefore can also work together really well. But what we often forget somehow is these communities are not only harmony and not all the time. So irritation, annoyance and conflict itself, those are actually, you can call it a price for leaving and working together. And I have the feeling that we're rarely taught that and we're rarely taught how to deal with that friction. Very often the reaction is sort of either a retreat, silence, or in worse cases, even the escalation of the conflict, sometimes even the court case. And I really believe it's a real loss because conflict can be a great opportunity to better understand each other and to grow trust through difficult conversations. But, um... I have the feeling we are not taught how to go through that path. And I personally still deeply believe in dialogue, in our capacity to be honest with each other. Sometimes it's very uncomfortable.
Speaker #1
So what you're saying, if I can rephrase, is that we are not taught anymore or not taught at all to agree that we disagree. And the disagreement may feel too personal and therefore people tend to just... Avoid it, try to avoid it at all costs and the cost of it being democratic decisions. Right.
Speaker #0
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For me, democracy depends on people believing they can disagree without destroying each other. So spaces where people can speak openly and safely are becoming very, very, very important, in my opinion. But sadly, we see that... but they're very rare. And yeah, I don't know, like I see a lot of sort of the dynamic of every disagreement becoming immediately a battlefield for people either sort of aggressively react to different opinions or withdraw completely and immediately. And neither of... those reactions is in my opinion healthy for the for the democratic system and um and this is not what we what we need at the moment no um yeah and i i do see it that sort of so the trust is built almost within surviving those those difficult conversations when when we can trust each other that we can have a difficult conversation that we can tell each other difficult things yeah This is how trust builds. And if you have strong communities like that, that are built on those conversations, and they know, okay, this is a safe place for me, you really see magic happening. Oh,
Speaker #1
yeah, And that's extremely interesting to have this proper conversation in the energy sector, because there is something like 90% of the world population who believe their government should do more on the climate. Much being. At the same time, they also feel completely alone, right? So they see maybe the tip of the iceberg, which is this kind of naysayer. And people will be saying like the nimbism, not in my backyard, or even the bananas, like build absolutely nothing, nothing at all near anyone. And that is, again, that's not the full part of the picture or of the conversation. No,
Speaker #0
exactly. I see it. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with your point. And I do have to say, I worry. I don't think the problem is that some people speak loudly and strong opinions or disagreements, as I said before, are not a problem, I don't think. The problem is and starts when sort of the spaces that we have are structured in a way that rewards the interruption, that rewards the aggression.
Speaker #1
Yeah, the bully.
Speaker #0
That's sort of, yeah. Yeah, that sort of puts people that are listening and that are curious, either the instructors are pushing them away. And I do see thoughtful and constructive people currently withdrawing. And that is a pity. Yeah, we're losing a lot of expertise. We lose a lot of wise opinions. And that is often a structure problem, in my opinion.
Speaker #1
And you're based in Germany, you mostly work in Germany, and you've been noticing this kind of bullying, trying to take over rooms. So what does this kind of process and your intervention as a mediator look like, specifically in an energy project setting? How do you start the conversation and rebuild this distrust?
Speaker #0
So broadly speaking, my job is to protect the spaces and to protect the structures that I was talking about. So creating conditions where quieter voices can stay present, when disagreements can exist without intimidation, first of all, and when people don't have to choose between silence or... saying openly what they think.
Speaker #1
So how does it look like?
Speaker #0
Yeah, it looks sort of differently in different cases. I work with board members, I work with small teams, I work with communities, but also with bigger groups that are working together on the participation structures of the energy projects. So the structure of it can look very differently. To sum it up, all of it is about sort of creating safe environments for... different opinions to exist and exist safely.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Then really magic happens because the expertise is normally in the room, which I experienced many times. And there is enough wisdom in the room. It's just often the structure that is not allowing for this wisdom to speak up.
Speaker #1
And who calls you in? Like who calls for a mediator to step in the room, whether it is a board, a team or a village? Who asks for a mediator to come in? Because I think it's extremely interesting and extremely relevant. But when you contacted me, I was even surprised that such a model existed, right? It looks extremely interesting and very absolutely relevant. And, you know, I work on... ESG, so Environmental, Social and Governance criteria at an international level. Community stakeholder engagement is really part of the backbone of sustainable development, right? But I had never heard of such practices in Europe. So when you contacted me, I was like, oh, yeah, I want to know more because I want to know how to make what you are sharing a best practice throughout the continent.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's really lovely to... It's really lovely to hear. I'm now very curious about your experience and I want to ask you more about it. But yeah, I'll do it after answering your question. So I have to admit that I wish I wouldn't have known that this institution exists earlier. Also because I wish I could have recommended it to some of the projects I was working on myself. The awareness that this is a possibility is still missing, in my opinion. And it's sort of a little similar to what I'm seeing now with, I kind of had the feeling that a couple of years ago, therapy was a little bit of a taboo topic. And a lot of people were sort of very afraid to even talk about it. And that is changing. That is changing. And I think that's a good thing. And it's similar with mediation. Sort of the acknowledging that you have a conflict, perhaps, is a big step. And it shouldn't be. As I'm saying, it's a price that we have to pay for strong and good relationships. It's a good thing. It's a good thing to have it. It's a safe space. It's honesty in its gist. So sometimes teams are able to do it by themselves and calling someone from outside doesn't mean that you can't do it by yourself or that you're giving up or that you're unable to deal with your own things. It just means you're getting help from a sort of a different perspective. Mediation and objectivity is very important. in mediation it's very important that there's someone who sees all the sides and it's not involved with the conflict and with the matter and so it's who calls me it's it's different people but what i what is very important for me is that that the sides of the both sides of the conflicts or if there are more than more that everyone wants to do. go for the process and really wants to do it together and it depends whether it's a smaller mediation or if it's a group and there are different processes for organizing it but it's very important that everyone is sort of willing to do it. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience as well because now I'm very curious. I have the feeling you you're very experienced with the topic as well. Can you say a little bit more about it?
Speaker #1
Yes. Someone recently told me and told other people that I was extremely good at making people talk. And that's exactly what I do with this podcast. So yeah, maybe that's just an extension of this special talent of mine. Yeah, so that's quite interesting. And thank you for asking, because right now you know me as the host of Energetic Podcast, maybe as the brain behind Next Energy Consumer, which is more of a policy consultancy, working with a lot of different clients on many different... topics that are all related to the social dimension of the energy transition. And it's really when I launched it back in 2018, it was really one of the first dealing exactly with this kind of angles. And one of the reasons why I decided to focus my company really on this angle is because the years before, for the previous six, seven, eight years. I had been in charge of the network of the Energy Ombudsman and working also with the Belgian Energy Ombudsman. So now I'm going to explain what an ombudsman is, apart from being a word that no one can really pronounce. And it's a gender neutral. So it's not, you don't say ombudswoman, it's bizarre because it's like a Nordic word or something. But basically, a numbersman is someone who intervenes when a person... or a legal person has a conflict with, let's say, a utility or maybe the administration. So in the case what I was dealing with, I was dealing with a person or a really legal person having issues with their energy supplier, energy utility, or maybe the distribution system operator, etc. And I was, that was extremely interesting for me because that was like the... The first time I stepped in, I realized that, you know, there were very big words in the energy sector that it would be delivering for everyone. And, you know, that you could monitor the consumption of your home very far away thanks to smart meter and so on. But exactly at the same time, in exactly the same reality, there were also people who couldn't pay for their energy bills and who were crying on the phone. And really, at the time, I was dealing in the morning with the people who are crying on the phones because their electricity had been shut down. And in the afternoon, I was at the European Commission and no one was really raising their voice saying, OK, this techno-centric approach is not fully delivering. There are a lot of things, subtleties that are complicated and that make people feel they don't belong. And the Ombudsman is here to help. So, you know. Years later, when I decided for many reasons to leave that space, I was approached by some researchers, Naomi Crutsfeld and Chris Gill. And they asked me to work on some research with them on access to justice and renewable energy consumers. And that really opened for me a full window, really, of trying to understand what was... behind and try to put a researcher hat on the work I was doing more as a practitioner. And I must say that these conversations and everything that I've seen in the first 10, 12 years of my career, they never left me. And to date, I still think and I still see and I still work with organizations that really, that have, that are acknowledging that. The success is only a positive outcome, it's not the same as success. And really, something that delivers doesn't mean that it delivers evenly and equally for everyone. So there's a lot of challenges that need resolving. And now I see more and more that are related to solar panels installation, or as you said, community energy project. Or even like larger project energy, like if you build solar panels in a forest or something, what the impact will be on the community and this kind of thing. So I started my company eight years ago, but I think that, you know, the work is only starting now. Like people are acknowledging now that there is this conflict and that not everybody is having the same voice. and had the same capacity to express this soundness.
Speaker #0
But you also, together with those researchers, do I remember it correctly that you wrote a book together? Yeah. True? Can you say a little bit more about it?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so it's called Juxt Energy, Access to Justice and Energy. I have it here. Access to Justice for Vulnerable and Energy for Consumers. So it's a collection of case studies from different countries. And basically, the starting point of this book and this research was that the people who lodged their complaints to the energy ombudsman are usually well-educated men in their 50s. It's probably the same kind you'll ask these as very informed and very loud in the kind of village conversation you may need, right? There are people who tend to be, let's say, on the... overprivileged layer of the population. Maybe they are not privileged in every sense of the terms, but they tend to be maybe the one who do not feel they can be belittled and who know their rights and know that the participation is possible, etc. So the book really tries to understand why you Do vulnerable and energy poor people do not complain? And one of the reasons is that they do not trust that anyone can help them. They are facing multiple difficulties at once, and they never feel heard, seen, represented. And they never feel that what they do can change anything in the process. You mentioned earlier that there are people who will just like quietly shut down and do not engage in the conflict because they feel that their voice is not going to be heard. Well, it's the same, except that in this case, the damage has already happened and they do not access the redress they should be entitled to by law. So it's extremely interesting to see that, you know, it's only... Between what you do, which is before, and what I used to do, which is in the after, there is this kind of infrastructure of lack of infrastructure of trust that is completely belittling a part of the population.
Speaker #0
Yeah, that and also really fascinating because it's also distorting the picture of reality, no? I mean, the volume and the confidence of some people. are making us i don't know how to describe it so i have the feeling that it's sort of the the volume and the confidence are not the same as the the wisdom and and sort of the diversity that we actually have in our society no yeah yeah and and actually sort of healthy communities and democracy they all depend on on the this this i mean we can we can use the the the notion that is being used perhaps too often but the freedom of speech now where it's um when it's not only a very small amount of people that that actually are using it but but sort of the the wider society and um yeah and it's uh and again we come back to to the question of trust yeah and and how to sort of What you speak about is this vacuum of sort of like, if you don't have a good structure, if you don't have like good structures that we try to create in mediation, when you almost build like one fundament, like when you build a structure where everyone sort of feels like they can stand up on their two feet and then they can actually speak up. if you don't have that then you have the power filling the vacuum in my opinion so it's like pure power is sort of getting through it and the problem of that is that we then have this this vision of of reality that this is our reality now yeah yeah it's not it's not it's just people being very loud but then we are not allowing rule.
Speaker #1
very wise voices to to speak up yeah yeah exactly exactly exactly it's not because you're loud or powerful or you look loud and and powerful that you are first that you're acting for the greater good and second that you are that you are wise right it's um yeah it's uh it's it's really interesting to see that you know also i mean given and... how complex the times are and far-right policymakers on all sides of the pond trying to project us in this kind of 1984 reality where trust is something that doesn't really be fathomable anymore, when they are actually little. infrastructures bit by bit that you can that you can put together right and you know something that i've um i got completely obsessed with in my in my career is that um this notion of trust because for for many people and many organizations trust is like yeah we need we need more trust in the energy sector we need people to trust us but they never put any kind of thought uh proper thoughts behind what it is. And there is another I really, really like whose name is Rachel Botsman. She's been inspiring me a lot. And for instance, she shows that one of her theories is that when you have this kind of, we all know this kind of psychological experience when a kid is being given a marshmallow and the kid is being told that if... he or she can wait 15 minutes, he will get another marshmallow, right? And she explains that basically the kid who will eat immediately the marshmallow, it's not because he or she is impatient, it's because the kid doesn't believe that a second marshmallow will come. So it's a question of trust. Does the kid actually trust that an adult or a figure of authority will be helping or will be... providing what he or she cared for to start with. And I find this kind of way of reading things super interesting because there are, of course, trade-offs and there are, of course, externalities, so impact and so on. But if the message only scratches the surface and never addresses the root of the mistrust, you don't You don't manage to go anywhere, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah, there's a really interesting article from, I think it's Odrika Binger and Sven Benson, if I'm not mistaken. I have to double check that. But they are looking into the topic of people sort of reacting to facts. End. then on the other hand, reacting to what they expect, what they fear, what they believe is going to happen. And I think that's another thing that I'm sort of experiencing a lot. It's expectations sort of emerge a lot from sort of the feelings and expectations and beliefs. And so you can have facts and you can cite. a lot of facts and a lot of promises. Yeah. But if you have in the room people who do not believe, and don't feel like this is true, then there's a big mismatch.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. And that's all the problem with the misinformation and disinformation, etc.
Speaker #0
Yeah. And I don't know if I should share. My worries, we have enough of them at the moment. But I do have to say I'm worried about what's happening with AI, for instance, what it does to us. Because what I see and what my experience is, is that this conflict competence and as I said before, it's necessary for strong teams. It's necessary for strong projects. It's the basis for it. And this competence, it grows through real interaction.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Like we learn it through human interactions.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And in sort of real human conversation. And no algorithmic agreement or sort of an opinion or beautifully formulated. piece of writing will give us this competence.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And we really have to get our hands dirty and get in and learn those competences. Yeah. And I really worry that we're heading the wrong direction when it comes to that.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
This is something we have to do. This is a doing. No theory. No reading up on it. Just sitting in this room and being uncomfortable with other human beings and giving them the feeling that you're there, that you're not leaving this room.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
I mean, it's also what you find with social media that really feeds you with only like as an echo chamber of really what your reality is. And yeah, I think that the AI also become extremely bespoke. So you will see only the part of that that echoes what you already feel and see. Right.
Speaker #1
So it's not a conversation.
Speaker #0
out.
Speaker #1
That is exactly the part that is sort of pulsing us into believing that we are having dialogue. No, that's not a dialogue. That's a machine that is programmed to make you feel like you're talking to someone who is agreeing with you. This machine is very skillful and can sound. like a person with a different opinion. But no, the purpose of it is to show you that it's agreeing with you.
Speaker #0
Yeah, but for me, there is one thing that makes the whole difference is that basically an AI is not accountable. Like it doesn't have any responsibility if anything goes wrong, right? It can help you make the decision. But at the end of the day, if you make a bad decision based on the AI, I mean, you look bad, not the AI. The AI doesn't really care about that, right? And accountability is completely part of, you know, the kind of infrastructure of trust. So I think that at the end of the day, if you outsource all of your judgment on it, that really shows your limit. But at the same time, if, I mean, they're extremely well- tailored to make you feel that you belong whereas many many human-made platforms never make you feel like you belong and that's also one of the challenges of what is necessary to to build trust right yeah i often try to and sort of explain it to to
Speaker #1
people i work with is is that it's not it's often confused what what we do is often confused with being nice ah yeah it's it's not about being nice it's actually often about sort of an enough safety for people to finally say what is really going on yeah if you want a good project if you want to be successful with your project you want to have people yeah that are that are willing to say hey maybe that's not a good idea maybe there is a better material yeah or the solution here and I heard and I read and I heard from someone else. that there's this new technical solution that we could use here. But you will have that. You will get that from other people with expertise that are willing to share that with you and be honest with you and say what's going on.
Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, with the work of Ombudsman, it's the difference between something that is legal, that a judge will assess as legal, and something that is there. In the sense that, is it socially fair? Is it having a kind of impact on the people who are least able to defend themselves, who are the smallest? Is it like it's really about because the law can be, of course, it can be right. But is the law fair? It's it's not. It's a completely different thing. yeah I think there's two elements I think being nice is not the same as being empathetic and being Right is not the same as being fair. And, you know, it's by really combining those things in practice that are profoundly human that you really see the difference of a human-made process and transaction. I mean, not a financial transaction, but like an exchange that makes a lot of, yeah, that makes the proper magic happen, as you said.
Speaker #1
Yeah. it's important to be respectful and it's important to have, you know, it's, yeah. Being nice. I meant sort of like, this is what we're getting from AI. AI is being nice to us.
Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker #1
It's being nice to us within sort of the framework that we define. And then it's, and then it's being nice to us. And that's very helpful. That is helping us. I agree. But this is not getting us towards good and strong communities. and good and strong relationships that we need to actually move forward. And I do not believe it's going to get there quickly. I think sitting down and having those difficult conversations with other human beings, I've seen it, the magic happening. I can really tell you, it's really magical. Please,
Speaker #0
tell us when. Tell us one of your most magical stories.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so all the mediations are confidential. So I'm not willing to share any stories. But what I can say is you can see different opinions sitting in one room. And at the end of it, people saying it's okay. It's the complexity of the thing that we're currently dealing with. Therefore, it's okay for all of us to have different opinions because it's a complex issue. Again, coming back to the beginning of our conversation, if you're not allowing this, you'll have a very loud person who is simplifying throughout the whole thing and making the very complex problem or project very simple. And then proposing a very simple solution to it.
Speaker #0
Yeah, which is not going into anyone's favor except his.
Speaker #1
Yeah, and we have seen this happening so many times. And we are seeing this happening at the moment on so many different levels. And I am myself tired. So you have either that. Or you have an alternative and you can have, as I'm saying, people sitting in a room saying it's a complex project. This complexity, we are all aware of it. Let's try together to find the best solution for this complex project. And then you have brilliant solutions coming. And you have people who are, as I'm saying, not afraid to come up with ideas. And maybe that's not going to be the idea that we're going to work on, but it's going to inspire some other thinking. And that's the magic that I see happening. And of course, AI on some levels, it's helpful and it can be used. And I've seen it. being used very, very, very creatively. But at the end of it, it's the people that sit in this room that create this magic.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Or sometimes it's a virtual space, just like this podcast. So thank you so much, Ursula. I mean, we are, yeah. I mean, I really, really enjoyed this conversation and also your questions. It's great to have people like you fool really decide to get into this kind of uncomfortable conversations. I must say that these are also my favorite. You don't have to take them personally because your job is first to listen and be empathetic. And then it's the people who have agency, but it's also the institutions that must have the accountability behind, right? It's a process of, you know... Putting the people with diverging opinions in the same room, making sure their voice is heard, making sure they belong, and also making sure that at the end of the day, the decisions that were taken collectively are being respected. So it's really like circling what trust is really as an infrastructure. So, you know, I've really put it in four words. Like if you ever... listen to me make this kind of public statement don't don't don't tell me that i've already said it too much because i think we haven't heard it enough but hermit trust as an infrastructure works through agency empathy accountability and belonging i haven't found a nice acronym but because for this i mean it's a e a b so it's um it doesn't make any sense but let's uh that's fine that's human that's not perfect
Speaker #1
No, it doesn't have to be perfect. Thanks a lot for the conversation. It was really inspiring. Yeah, I also believe that we need the trust in the rooms. One invitation to everyone, don't be afraid to sort of get some help and support. It's really worth it. And thank you for your work, for your research, for your previous work, and also for this podcast. I'm a big fan. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Energetic explores the people, policies and institutions shaping Europe's and the world's energy transition. I am Marine Cornelis. If you found this conversation valuable, you can share it with colleagues working on housing, governance and consumer protection. You will find references and further reading in the show notes. Until next time.

About Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

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About Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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