Many levels, one voice
There are moments when design work brings me joy. For me, that joy comes less in the result than in the discovering, in watching a tangle of policy language and research findings slowly reveal its own structure, its own story waiting to be told.
Co-creating climate and energy policy in the EU
This spring, I had the pleasure of designing a report for the NECPlatform research project, a piece titled "Many levels, one voice: Co-creating climate and energy policy in the EU."
There's something quietly radical about the work the NECPlatform partners undertook. Local and regional authorities, the very people implementing building renovations and sustainable mobility measures, the ones on the ground with communities, have too often been left out of national planning. The project aimed to bring them to the table, to create what they called CEDs: Climate and Energy Dialogues that could bridge the gap between European ambition and local reality.
One thousand voices
Designing for such a project meant finding a visual language that could hold complexity without collapsing under its weight. It meant making 38 dialogues and 1000 voices feel not like overwhelming noise but like the necessary chorus they were.
There's awe in work like this, certainly. Awe at the ambition required to bring so many levels of government into genuine dialogue. There's satisfaction too, in watching a report take shape that honors both the complexity and the hope embedded in this kind of multilevel governance work.
This project was possible thanks to the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) funding under LIFE programme.
Deliverable title D4.1 - Final publishable report
Completed in May 2025
Prepared by IEECP with support of all project partners
Reviewed by Energy Cities
Graphic design Agata Smok