Energy, community and a regenerative approach: An interview with Ksenia Balanda from Nadara

In a recent interview on the topic of regeneration, Enrico Foglia (Global Strategy Director at BIP.Verco, and co-author of “REGENERATION: The Future of Community in a Permacrisis World”) spoke with Ksenia Balanda (General Manager, Offshore Wind Italy at Nadara) about the benefits of developing a regenerative approach.

You can read the interview below, and find out more about BIP.Verco's work with Nadara here.

1. Energy and prices

In recent years, the debate on the cost of renewable energy has often been marked by highly polarised positions. From your perspective, are renewables today genuinely helping to lower energy costs for households and businesses? And how much do factors such as energy independence, price stability and security of supply matter in this scenario?

Saying today that renewables are driving up the cost of energy is, in fact, misleading. The reality is exactly the opposite: their growing share in the energy mix is helping to reduce the price of energy for both households and businesses.

It's true that until around fifteen years ago, incentives were essential to kick-start industrial supply chains and accelerate technological innovation in renewables. Since then, however, the cost of installing solar and wind plants has collapsed, by a factor of ten or fifteen in some cases. Today, in many countries, producing energy from renewable sources is already cheaper than from traditional fossil fuels. Take the Italian case, where this mechanism is particularly evident: the price of energy is still heavily influenced by gas, which is the marginal source and therefore the one that sets the final price. But as the share of renewables in the system increases, especially during daylight hours, gas plants are progressively pushed out of the market and energy prices tend to fall significantly.

But we can no longer talk about renewables without also addressing energy independence and security of supply. In Europe, for years we simply moved from one dependency to another: first Russian gas, now American LNG. Renewables, on the other hand, offer us the chance to build a more autonomous, more stable model, less exposed to geopolitical tensions.

Finally, there's an aspect we cannot afford to overlook: the environmental one. Renewables have a residual emissions impact compared to fossil sources. They represent a decisive tool for tackling climate change and protecting key sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure and real estate.

2. International outlook and competitiveness

Looking at the international market, many countries are moving decisively on offshore wind development and, more broadly, on strengthening their energy mix. What lessons can be drawn from more advanced experiences, such as those of Spain and France? And what role can Nadara play in bringing forward models that combine energy transition, industrial competitiveness and long-term vision?

Across Europe we're seeing very different speeds in the adoption of renewables and offshore wind. The reasons are manifold: political, cultural, industrial and infrastructural. But the real differentiator lies in some countries' ability to set a clear medium-to-long-term strategy and pursue it consistently.

Spain is one of the most significant examples: in just a few years it has built a very strong renewables presence in its energy mix. The same is true for France, which continues to invest in nuclear but is, at the same time, moving decisively on offshore and other renewable sources. This shows there is no ideological opposition between technologies: the real challenge is building a balanced, competitive and resilient energy mix.

What these countries have in common is the ability to maintain a stable direction over time. Governments change, ministers change, but the strategic objective doesn't.

In Italy, by contrast, we too often remain anchored to the emergency of the moment, without clearly defining where we want to be in ten or twenty years. Renewables, and offshore wind in particular, are technologies available today, capable of delivering concrete results far sooner than other energy solutions that require very long implementation timeframes. This is why operators like Nadara can play a crucial role: not only in developing new plants, but also in building a more stable, sustainable industrial vision oriented towards the country's energy sovereignty.

3. Community and shared value

Increasingly, the success of an energy project depends on the ability to build a genuine relationship with local communities. How strategic is it today, for a player like Nadara, to move from a traditional logic of compensating the territory to a genuine community regeneration approach, based on listening, participation and the creation of shared value?

The real paradigm shift is moving from a logic of simple economic compensation to one of participation and co-creation of value with the territory.

For many years, the model adopted by our sector was straightforward: build a plant, economically compensate the territory and its political representatives, and the relationship ends there. We, instead, are trying to build something different: involving the community from the very start of the project, not only once the plant has already been decided or is under construction.

This is an approach Nadara has pursued for over twenty years. We were among the first, for example, to build a “community turbine” in the UK, a wind turbine whose revenues were reinvested directly by the local community to improve schools, public buildings and local infrastructure. The same approach was later extended through crowdfunding tools and broad participation, where citizens are not simply bystanders or recipients of compensation, but become active participants in the project.

This radically changes the perspective: it's no longer about ‘putting up with’ a plant in exchange for something, but about building together a project capable of generating shared, lasting value. And above all, it changes the relationship of trust: when people feel they have a real role and can contribute to decisions, the project is no longer perceived as something imposed from outside, but as a genuine growth opportunity for the territory.

4. The “Regeneration” project

In the two wind farm projects in Puglia that Nadara is developing, where BIP has supported you, we tried together to put this vision into practice: not simply building consensus around the plant, but activating, together with the territory, initiatives capable of generating value over time, even beyond the presence of the plant itself. How has this approach allowed Nadara to strengthen dialogue with local communities and give greater solidity, credibility and continuity to its offshore projects in Italy?

The "Regeneration" project represented an evolution fully consistent with how we understand our relationship with territories. The idea wasn't to build consensus through traditional economic compensation, but to build together with the community something that could keep generating value even independently of the offshore plant's presence. We didn't want to ‘placate discontent’, but to create the conditions for people and communities to genuinely express their potential.

In this process, the work we did together was decisive because it led us to speak directly with people, with the authentic leaders of local communities: often figures far from the spotlight, but deeply rooted in the territory. People capable of generating real social impact every day, through cooperatives, educational initiatives, social inclusion and community spaces. We've seen that when projects are built together with communities, the value generated multiplies over time. It's not an intervention that ends with an initial payment: it's an investment that can sustain itself, evolve and keep producing benefits for years.

For an operator like Nadara, this means building a much more solid and lasting relationship with the territory. An offshore project has a lifespan of thirty years or more. It's only natural, then, that the bond with the community should also take a long-term perspective, well beyond normal political or administrative cycles. I believe this approach can become a reference model for other operators in the sector too, because it demonstrates in concrete terms that there is a different way of doing business: more participatory, more regenerative and more sustainable over time.

5. The importance of leadership

In the course of this project, you chose to go beyond traditional models of economic compensation, genuinely engaging with communities and with what we might call the territory's ‘quiet leaders’: people often far from the spotlight, but capable of generating trust, cohesion and concrete opportunities. How important is it today, for companies, institutions and managers, to develop a form of regenerative leadership capable not only of steering a business, but also of creating the conditions for communities to express their potential and generate lasting value?

I believe regenerative leadership is essential today because real change doesn't come from imposition or simple economic compensation. It comes from the ability to create opportunities and conditions for people to express themselves and build something of their own.

This is the central point: not to ‘give’, but to ‘give opportunity’.

In our work we've seen that there are already many regenerative leaders in local territories. They're not always institutional figures or people visible in the media. Often they're people you won't even find online, but whom everyone in the community spontaneously points to as a reference. They're the ones who, for years, have held together social networks, cooperatives, local initiatives, projects for young people, vulnerable people or social enterprises. People who generate real trust. What we've tried to do is recognise and value these energies already present in communities, creating a process in which the company doesn't arrive from above to ‘solve a problem’, but builds together with the territory something that can go on living autonomously over time.

For me, this is the difference between a traditional approach and a regenerative one: in the first, you distribute resources that run out; in the second, you create a system that keeps producing value, relationships and opportunities even independently of the company's presence. It's an approach that requires listening, authenticity and a long-term vision.

I believe what's needed today are precisely leaders capable of this: people who don't seek immediate consensus, but who help communities, organisations and territories become stronger, more autonomous and more aware of their own value. Because, in the end, community is an infinite resource, but you have to know how to listen to it with honesty and respect.

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