Interview with Erik Hagelskjær Lauridsen, Senior Consultant of the Building Renewal Department, City of Copenhagen

Hello Erik, nice to meet you. Could you please a little bit explain who you are, where you work in the City of Copenhagen and what your role and function is in the city’s administration?

I work with my team in the Building Renewal department within the Technical and Environmental Administration of the City of Copenhagen where we primarily focus on initiating actions and develop projects related to the green transition. For the moment, we are especially engaged in projects regarding green energy production but our focus spans from circular economy projects in traditional retrofit projects through promoting installation solar cells to developing new portfolio based business models to support new energy solutions in the old buildings of the existing city.

Our department is called Building Renewal, because its scope is to preserve and futureproof the everyday architecture of the City of Copenhagen, so we can secure healthy and safe housing to the citizens. This primarily concerns residential buildings. I am a senior consultant in this department. Before I joined this team, I worked as associate professor in environmental planning at Aalborg University. I am the co-team leader of the green-transition team of the building renewal department. In addition, I work as a project manager for some of the bigger projects.

In the city of Copenhagen, you and your team developed an Energy Academy CPH to provide support for creating of energy communities (ECs)? What are the objectives of this Academy?

The main objectives are:

• To “capacity build” ourselves – this means us and our colleagues –  to provide technical and organizational assistance to local citizens
• To build bridges across municipal departments who are working in the field  of building related transitions of the energy system such as PV installations, heating cellars, energy behaviour etc.
• To create a network for knowledge sharing and debate between various actors who are interested in the EC agenda.
• After all, we aim at an increase of the development of ECs in our area and the Energy Academy is preparing us to be able to support the local initiatives from the citizens and local organizations. 

In Denmark, it is quite a challenge to develop small-scale ECs in the cities – due to the taxes and legislation of the existing energy system. We want to create this network to disseminate our knowledge on this relatively new topic to people and organizations and discuss with them what the potentials of ECs in Copenhagen are and what options are available to create them. We also want to find out, what support and tools actors need to create ECs here.  

Equally, we need to learn from the actors and collect the local knowledge to this topic. This implies to engage with e.g. the Distribution Services Operators to know their perspectives on the possibilities to integrate ECs in the Danish energy system.

Since when does your Academy exist?

We founded the Academy on 29. September of this year –  so it is rather new. The academy is closely linked to the Climate Task Force, which coordinates municipal departments working with different aspects of the green transition.

Which were the reasons and the background for its foundation?

The Green Agenda, the reduction of CO2 emissions and the Climate Action Plan of the municipality were the basic political motivation. There were also several ongoing activities which we wanted to interconnect. Another reason, of course, was our engagement in the LIFE-BECKON project which fostered our motivation to work in this direction.

In 2022, when we started the Life-BECKON project here, local actors told us that it is very difficult to develop ECs in Copenhagen, the PV installations are so small and it is not beneficial to put them on the roofs. Thus, we saw that it was necessary to engage the strategic actors in the process and learn from them. Multiple citizens and organizations are trying to create ECs – we try now to find out how we as a municipality can contribute to support these actors and stakeholder to work closer together.

What kind of services or what specific organizational or technical support does your Energy Academy provide?

We want to develop an organization, that can make sure that when some people come to us saying “We want to put PV on our roofs” or “We want to share renewable energy locally” we can help them how to approach it or take them to the next step in the process. We cannot advise them what specific technical solutions or installations they should use, but we can provide an overview and process support. The Energy Academy is designed to develop a good toolbox for the needs of our citizens and local actors.

To accelerate green transition, we need to empower the local structures of the city such as neighbourhood councils to more strongly engage in both identifying local plans as well as supporting implementation in different local contexts. The local level has stronger networks and knowledge of constraints and possibilities at the district and neighborhood level. This meso-level approach to implementation can thus support and complement the more top-down structured campaigns of city hall.

Could you give one or two examples of your actual work?

One example is a series of workshops with strategic energy experts from the social housing sector, where we develop scenarios and discuss possible approaches to proceed with EC projects based on a case of a specific neighbourhood.

We work in close collaboration with the Department of Urban Renewal. Their approach is to target an area for urban renewal in a 5-year period, where they move physically to the area and work closely with citizens and organizations of the local community. We have 4 colleagues called “climate employees” who work in these urban renewal areas, where they engage with the citizens to establish local action groups that work on specific topics they choose by themselves. We plan to “capacity build” these colleagues so that they can show these people options for creating ECs and tell them “If you are interested in ECs, you can go the Energy Academy for help and support.” We work really close to the citizens and, at the same time, we aim at collaborating with other departments to create synergies.

Could you give a few recommendations for action to colleagues who plan to install a similar office or Energy Academy in their area?

We have a lot of success by providing and facilitating forums in which different stakeholders with specific knowledge can learn from each other and where, on the other hand, municipalities can learn from them. ECs is a relatively new topic, at least in Copenhagen. This helps us to define what could be the public administration’s role in the development process. In addition, we learn about other perspectives, gain knowledge from the local stakeholders and citizens, what they are working on and aiming for  –  and last but not least what they know better than us.

You and your municipality participate, together with 7 other European organizations – among them Climate Alliance, in the LIFE BECKON project (the project is described here in another article). In one or two sentences, why should other cities or municipalities participate in the BECKON project as replicators?

BECKON will provide a specific toolbox for the development of ECs helping us to support our citizens and local stakeholders. We will definitely profit from the very specific tools BECKON develops for each step of creating an EC.

In addition, it provides inspiration and expert knowledge from colleagues or experts in other areas or countries who face similar situations, which enables you to reflect on your local context and what role ECs could play in your own area. For example, the existing energy poverty office, which the energy agency SOFENA from Sofia, our BECKON partner, established, has inspired us to think about our local agenda and make it more concise and to the point.

Thank you Erik, Asta and Eik, very much for the interview.

Contact: Erik Hagelskjær Lauridsen, Senior Consultant, City of Copenhagen  

Email: LC2E@kk.dk

_{written in December 2023}