The Energy Manager of the acciona.org Foundation, Cristina Ruiz, participated in the Forum "Partnerships for Social Innovation", where they discussed about social innovation as a common challenge; the role of public administrations and foundations; energy poverty in Spain and successful projects such as collective self-consumption in San Juan del Puerto (Huelva).

The forum was organized by infoLibre and chaired by Daniel Basteiro, director of infoLibre. The participants were: Joan Groizard, general director of IDAE (Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving) of the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge; María José Manjón, researcher of Energy and Poverty at Comillas Pontifical University; Tomás Domínguez, councilor for Ecological Transition and Sustainable Development of San Juan del Puerto (Huelva); and Miguel Ángel Irigoyen, director of Operations at Güifi.net Foundation.

(Spanish version video)

The Energy Manager of acciona.org said that "the acciona.org foundation, with projects in South America and Spain, understands social innovation as the search for solutions to problems that the population has and that conventional means are not able to solve".

In addition, Cristina Ruiz explained that it is essential to work together (with public administrations) and share learnings in order to create conditions that favor organizations, such as acciona.org Foundation and other NGOs, to implement projects. In this way, she says that public administrations can make public policies, grant and guarantee targeted aid with the aim of "benefiting a greater number of people".

This forum brings current issues that are necessary considering that, according to the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition, between 9.6% and 16% of households in Spain were in a situation of energy poverty in 2020 and, currently, the trend is increasing.

You can read the complet new here (Spanish version):