If you’ve been following my work, you know I say this all the time:
The hardest part of the energy transition isn’t the technology: it’s the people.
We know how to cut emissions, build efficient cities, and deploy clean energy. The physics, the engineering, the financial models exist.
Yet, things still move at a frustratingly slow pace. Why?
Because climate action isn’t just about deploying solutions—it’s about navigating people’s fears, habits, and resistance to change.
That’s why my conversation with Giulia Ulpiani on the latest episode of Energ’ Ethic Podcast resonated so much. She started in thermodynamics, optimising energy efficiency in buildings. Now, she’s tackling the messy reality of climate governance, supporting cities in the 100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission.
And her biggest realisation? Urban transformation is as much about human dynamics as it is about thermodynamics.
Listen now: https://smartlink.ausha.co/energ-ethic-climate-justice-and-energy-transition/e66-giulia-ulpiani
Why Are Cities Struggling to Move Faster?
I’ve worked on energy transition for years, and I see the same obstacles everywhere:
- The Finance Bottleneck: Cities don’t have the financial firepower to make the transition alone. Even when funding exists, bureaucratic hurdles and risk aversion slow everything down.
- The Governance Maze: Most cities weren’t built for climate action. Housing, transport, and energy are managed in separate silos, making coordination painfully slow.
- The Trust Gap: This is the big one. People say they care about climate action—until it disrupts their daily routines.
We’ve seen it firsthand. Even the most well-intended projects meet resistance when people don’t feel included in the process.
And that’s the real challenge: How do we design climate action that people actually support?
People Are the Solution, too
In my work, I keep coming back to three principles:
- Finance isn’t just about money—it’s about power. Cities need better tools to attract private investment, like green bonds and revenue-sharing models that make decarbonisation a win for everyone.
- Governance needs to break out of silos. A city’s energy transition can’t be managed department by department. Climate action has to be cross-sectoral, linking housing, transport, and public space in a single strategy. That’s also exactly the point of the groundbreaking policy report on Summer Energy Poverty I wrote for the European Commission.
- People need to feel ownership of the transition. If climate action feels top-down, it will fail. The most successful projects I’ve seen are co-designed with communities. That means real conversations, real listening, and making sure benefits are tangible—safer streets, cleaner air, lower bills.
Because let’s be honest: people don’t wake up thinking about net-zero targets. They wake up thinking about their daily lives. If their home and their surroundings are too hot, if they can’t afford to run air conditioning, they don’t care if it’s an energy or climate policy topic. They want solutions.
Let’s Talk Solutions
That’s why this conversation with Giulia Ulpiani is a must-listen. She gets it—she’s gone from studying energy systems to understanding the politics and psychology behind them.
The transition is not just about building better cities. It’s about making people feel that those cities belong to them.
Listen to the latest episode of Energ’Ethic to hear how cities can navigate the human side of climate action.
Listen Now: https://smartlink.ausha.co/energ-ethic-climate-justice-and-energy-transition/e66-giulia-ulpiani
And to know more about the challenges of Summer Energy Poverty and its solutions: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/af533cb3-f7df-11ef-b7db-01aa75ed71a1/language-en
