Meet our team | Antti Roose, University of Tartu: “The role of local leaders and officers is critical for launching our pilots in twelve Estonian municipalities”

Antti Roose, Professor of Resource Management at the University of Tartu, is another of the professionals who make up the EC4RURAL team. He and his team organised the second EC4RURAL face-to-face meeting in Tartu at the end of September, where we learned about the work of the Estonian partners building the twelve rural energy communities in the country hand in hand with the citizens.

What is your role in the EC4RURAL project?
My role is to coordinate the project actions at the University of Tartu as well as in the training work package with six modules to facilitate and assist the delivery of community energy models and cases.

In general, what are the challenges you face in a project like this and how do you deal with them?
Highly important is to continue facilitating the energy community actions for launching pilots in twelve Estonian municipalities. The role of municipal leaders and officers is critical to set the framework, objectives and coordinated workflow. Also, we proceed with the plan-making module in training introducing the key principles, elements, aims and possible actions in planning energy communities and setting the new, more ambitious goals.

Any challenges in relation to pan-European and Estonian cooperation?
Indeed, we have different background, experiences, and also different interests by partners. We work with diverse local stakeholders linked with local authorities. It requires special professional knowledge and communication skills. In Estonia, we keep the project moving and progressing with face-to-face and Teams meetings. The momentum should be kept high in multiple Estonian regions. Also, we tend to harmonise and coordinate actions across all Estonian partners and external initiatives in the expanding scene of energy communities. We should keep a result-oriented ethos in the EC4RURAL project.

What is the most satisfying aspect of your work?
The first project year was seminal, in terms of methodologies, surveys, actions as well as follow-up. I enjoy teamwork and empathy with new colleagues.

From your point of view, why do you think projects like EC4RURAL are important for society?
Rural areas are shrinking and every single project should contribute to the rural development. In our case, energy transition led by local communities. The community energy can tackle wellbeing issues, blackouts, energy poverty, know-how transfer etc. During our second annual meeting in Tartu we experienced a really instrumental dialogue on barriers and solutions in Elva, Alutaguse, Tori and Saku municipalities. Those meetings and training sessions were directly related to the local climate and energy plans, how to justify those ambitious goals and how to set the path for reasonable actions for the community-based and community-serving energy facilities.

Antti Roose during the welcome speech at the EC4RURAL meeting in Tartu.