In the latest episode of the EU Energy Projects Podcast, the spotlight turns to one of the most critical—and often overlooked—pillars of Europe’s clean energy transition: buildings.

Recorded in the context of Enlit Europe 2025 in Bilbao, this episode follows the session “Flexible Solutions Empowering Citizens” and explores how thermal energy storage and digital integration can unlock flexibility at the local level. Joining the discussion are Emilia Pisani and Guillermo Andrés Nieto, representing the Thermal Energy Storage Cluster (TES Cluster), a collaboration of four Horizon Europe projects: THUMBS UP, ECHO, BEST Storage and Hi-Store.

Katrin Stökle, project manager at Steinbeis Europa Sentrum, discusses how the Steinbeis project cluster is approaching the decarbonisation of energy intensive industries.

Five diverse projects – of which four are active and one completed – comprise the Steinbeis energy cluster, with the common goal of decarbonising and advancing the energy transition of energy intensive processes in various industries.

These are H2GLASS and MOST-H2 focussed on how hydrogen can be used in industrial processes in the glass and transport sectors and COREu and CAPTUS focussed on carbon capture, use and storage in sectors such as steel, cement and chemicals. The completed project is FLEX4FACT, which focussed on the use of flexibility in industry through enabling production processes to adapt dynamically to renewable energy availability.

Areti Ntaradimou joined by Laurent Schmit from Project EDDIE, an EU-driven initiative transforming how energy data is accessed and shared across Europe. By building a decentralized, open-source Data Space aligned with EU Clean Energy Package rules, EDDIE supports interoperability, strengthens Europe’s energy resilience, and reinforces the EU’s geopolitical and economic ambitions.