Sustainable Regions in Action
The real, messy, complicated, and genuinely exciting work of getting Europe to where it needs to be
Completed in: March 2026
Author: FEDARENE with members’ contributions
Editors: Mélissa Miklos and Anna Soressi (FEDARENE)
Layout and typesetting: Agata Smok
Graphic design based on visual identity and template by Fifty Fifty (Brussels)
FEDARENE brings together over 90 member organisations across 25 countries, from Portugal to Estonia, from Norway to Cyprus, and every year they publish a report that maps what regional energy agencies are doing on the ground. Not the aspirational stuff. The real, messy, complicated, genuinely exciting work of getting Europe to where it needs to be.
The 2026 edition covers thirteen chapters: energy efficiency in buildings, renewables for energy security, citizen-led energy, climate resilience, financing the transition, AI and digitalisation, decarbonisation for competitiveness, grid capacity, sustainable heating and cooling, sustainable islands, energy sufficiency, circular economy, sustainable mobility, and integrated planning.
Over 100 pages of technically dense, carefully researched, and important material. It's a lot. A lot in the best possible way.
My job was layout and typesetting, working from a beautiful existing visual identity and template created by the Brussels-based studio Fifty Fifty. Working within a strong, well-considered template is its own kind of pleasure. This time I didn’t start from a blank canvas. I could be a careful steward of something someone else built with thought and intention. I could focus on getting the details right, the alignments clean, the navigation intuitive across a document that spans 14 thematic chapters and dozens of contributors from across the continent. That's the work I really love!
The team at FEDARENE were brilliant. Structured, ambitious, clear about what they needed, and also open to the small adjustments I'd suggest along the way. That kind of collaboration, where there's trust on both sides, is worth mentioning.
I'm lucky to work with people who are using their talents and their time to try to make things better. That matters to me more than I know how to say briefly.
One passage from the report has stayed with me. Benedetta Brighenti, FEDARENE Vice-President and President of AESS in Italy, writes about climate resilience and cities: "Without cities there is no climate transition".
Not as a slogan, but as a structural argument. Urban areas, she says, are where risks materialise and where solutions can be designed, integrated, and scaled. It's the kind of clear-eyed, urgent, hopeful thinking that makes you want to do your part of the work well.
Which is, I suppose, exactly why I got into this job.
FEDARENE, 2026