Energ’Ethic - Climate Justice and Energy Transition

EUSEW turns 20. To mark it, Marine Cornelis sits down at the European Sustainable Energy Week with three people who have spent two decades inside EU energy policy: Thomas Nowak (heat pumps and buildings), Dušan Jakovljević (industrial energy efficiency) and Heike Winkler (offshore wind and the North Sea).
The conversation treats EUSEW as a mirror. What it foregrounds, and what it sidelines, tracks whatever the Commission has in vogue, from hydrogen to carbon capture, often at the expense of people, consumers and energy poverty.
What we get into:
Why a convening that reflects priorities struggles to set them, and how limited slots turn the agenda into a zero-sum game

Electrification as the efficient core of the system, and the "primary energy fallacy" still used against it

Re-industrialisation, green hydrogen and jobs, and where a top-down European approach might have moved faster

The single market's unfinished business, and the real cost of member-state deviations

Why EUSEW keeps talking to the already-convinced, and how to bring member states and silos into the same room

Parallel agendas, from the New European Bauhaus to energy poverty and citizen advisory hubs, and the risk of fragmentation

A stocktake of what changed, what was harder than it should have been, and what a fair, socially accepted transition still demands.

Energ'Ethic, with Marine Cornelis of Next Energy Consumer: the energy transition examined through the people it touches and the systems that govern it. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.

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

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© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

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

You have more energy rights than you think, and the EU's Unlock Your Power campaign wants you to start using them.

Most of us never think about our energy rights until a bill stops adding up or a supplier gets something wrong. That is the day those rights are tested in real life, and the day you find out whether they mean anything at all.

Recorded live on launch day at EU Sustainable Energy Week, Marine speaks with Katarzyna Wolos of European Commission's DG Energy about Unlock Your Power, the European Commission's first awareness campaign on consumer energy rights. Built around ordinary life stages rather than legislation, it rests on one idea: the power to understand, choose and act is already yours.

In this conversation:
Why awareness is the weak link when only a third of Europeans say they fully understand their bill

How the Citizens Energy Package becomes real: protection from disconnection, transparent billing, the right to join an energy community

One message across three realities: cooling in Greece, heating in Czechia, shared solar in Spain

Redress as the invisible right, and why knowing a door exists changes how people act

Trust as a confident relationship with the unknown, and what that asks of institutions

A companion to Ep "The Public Square" with Ewelina Hartstein, the episode sits where consumer rights, vulnerability and the credibility of EU energy policy meet.

Campaign: Unlock Your Power: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/energy-consumers-and-prosumers/unlock-your-power_en

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

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 

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© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

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

Two years ago at EUSEW 2024, I called my vox pop episode "the dog who caught the bus." After years of running hard to define the European Green Deal, the EU had finally caught what it was chasing, and seemed unsure what to do next. I ended that episode saying it was time for extra communication efforts, starting with uncomfortable conversations.

Two years on, this episode asks the same question from inside the institution. Ewelina Hartstein leads external communication at DG Energy and is one of the people responsible for staging EUSEW. We talk about the work behind the work: how DG Energy chooses what gets said, who gets to speak, and what remains off-stage at a moment when energy policy is entangled with affordability, security, and trust.

What the conversation surfaces:
Why "it comes from Brussels" is, in her own words, an expression she does not like

What it means that EUSEW "brings together a community of people who are convinced," and how DG Energy thinks about engaging the unconverted

The 20th anniversary edition's three-word theme (clean, secure, competitive) and the affordability dimension she insists belongs alongside them

A live disagreement on whether the conversations EUSEW hosts are "uncomfortable" or "perfectly legitimate"

The shift she names directly: energy moving from commodity to right, and a new EU awareness campaign on people's rights in energy launching at EUSEW

A behind-the-scenes conversation released around EUSEW 2026 (9 to 11 June, Brussels and online).

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

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

© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

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

The EU's energy transition contains clear legal obligations to prioritise vulnerable households. The EPBD requires financial incentives to target energy-poor households first. The Energy Efficiency Directive requires member states to make the best possible use of public funding for low-income consumers. And yet without binding targeting requirements, public money flows to middle-income and affluent groups by institutional default — not by accident, but by design.

Anna Zsófia Bajomi, Energy Poverty Policy Officer at FEANTSA, traces the mechanism: post-financing schemes that assume households can pre-invest thousands of euros; eligibility criteria built around formal employment and debt-free status; CO₂ savings indicators easier to reach among better-off households. The outcome is predictable — and avoidable.

In this episode:
Why firewood users in Central and Eastern Europe remain invisible in EU statistics and crisis response, and how EU policy has perversely incentivised continued burning while punishing countries for the air pollution it causes

How renovation schemes including France's MaPrimeRenov structurally exclude the poorest through co-contribution requirements

The gap between EPBD and EED targeting obligations and what the MFF 2028–2034 actually delivers

Why untargeted public subsidies crowd out private finance rather than leverage it

New York State's 35% community benefit mandate as a governance reference for Europe

References: FEANTSA · European Energy Poverty Handbook · Jacques Delors Institute · EPBD Art. 17(18) · EED Art. 24(3) · MaPrimeRenov · New York State Climate Act

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

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

© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

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

Energy poverty didn't exist as a concept in Spain when Marta García París first encountered it. Today, Ecoserveis runs one of the most cited local intervention models in Europe — built not on technical expertise alone, but on the conviction that citizens are the experts, and institutions exist to translate that expertise into action.

This episode, originally released in 2021, marks the beginning of Energ'Ethic. We're replaying it at episode 100 because the questions it raises have only sharpened: who gets to access the energy transition, on what terms, and through whose knowledge?

What this episode covers:
How Ecoserveis came to define energy poverty in a Mediterranean context where the concept had no name — and what that process reveals about the limits of Northern European policy frameworks when applied elsewhere

The Barcelona energy advice points: a public service model that pairs technical energy guidance with peer support from people who have themselves experienced vulnerability

Why information access — not technology — remains the central barrier to an inclusive energy transition, and how targeted advice can unblock situations that financial support alone cannot

The compounding effect of COVID-19 on energy vulnerability, particularly for households that shifted from workplace to home without the financial or physical infrastructure to absorb that change

How European project networks enabled Ecoserveis to import, test, and ultimately export intervention models — including a peer-to-peer training approach now being scaled through the SWEET project

Marine Cornelis is the founder of Next Energy Consumer, a policy consultancy working on energy poverty, consumer rights, and housing at EU level. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu

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

© Next Energy Consumer, 2026

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