Waiting for connection: local stories on Europe’s grid challenges
Case Study: Beyond Fossil Fuels
Gemma Voaden, Senior Net Zero Manager at Together Housing, photographed in Blackburn (UK).
Credit: Mat Johns / Beyond Fossil Fuels / Fairpicture
Brief
Europe's energy transition is underway. Solar panels are going up. Heat pumps are being installed. Energy cooperatives are forming in towns and cities that didn't even have the vocabulary for it a decade ago. And yet – again and again – the same thing happens: the technology is ready, the ambition is there, and then the process grinds to a halt. Because the grid isn't keeping up.
Beyond Fossil Fuels is a civil society network pushing for a coal-free Europe by 2030 and a fossil gas phase-out from the power sector by 2035. Alongside their research and policy work, they wanted to complement it with something else: the voices of real people directly affected. The brief was to find the human face of grid connection failure and show what it actually costs when distribution system operators (DSOs) can't – or don't – move fast enough.
Fairpicture produced four case study videos and accompanying photography across the UK, Spain, Germany, and Türkiye. Each story was shot by a local visual creator team. Our creative director oversaw the production and brought the footage together into a single cohesive film.
This was Fairpicture's first European multinational production.
Client
Beyond Fossil Fuels
Visual Creators
Tobias Thiele / Creative Director (Germany), Mat Johns (UK), Lucija Stojevic & Andres Bartos (Spain), Emre Çaylak (Türkiye)
Theme
Grid access and the energy transition
Locations
Blackburn (UK), Terrassa (Spain), Neumünster (Germany), Çorum (Türkiye)
Date
June 2026
Waiting for connection: local stories on Europe’s grid challenges – Feature Video
Credit: Tobias Thiele / Creative Director (Germany), Mat Johns (UK), Lucija Stojevic & Andres Bartos (Spain), Emre Çaylak (Türkiye)
Our goal was to turn a technical, often overlooked energy topic into human stories that people would genuinely connect with. Fairpicture made that vision a reality. They were communicative, easy to collaborate with, and delivered four visually cohesive yet distinctive films that exceeded our expectations.
Laura Penzo, Communications Manager at Beyond Fossil Fuels
Pau Sales at one of the solar panel installations installed by Terrassa City Hall (Spain)
Credit: Lucija Stojevic & Andres Bartos / Beyond Fossil Fuels / Fairpicture
Context
From a social housing provider in northern England to a food cooperative in central Türkiye, the four stories we documented span very different settings, sectors, and scales. What connects them is simple: in each case, the technology was ready, the people were ready, and the grid wasn't. Each story below speaks for itself – paired with the images and voices of the people behind it.
GERMANY – Neumünster
In Neumünster, a housing cooperative installed solar panels on their rooftops more than a year ago. The plan was a classic Mieterstrom model: clean energy produced directly above the tenants, delivered directly below. The panels went up. Then nothing happened. The local DSO has so far failed to complete the grid connection. Tenants look up and see the panels every day. Not a single kilowatthour has reached them. The energy cooperative behind the project has since filed a formal complaint with the Bundesnetzagentur.
Credit: Tobias Thiele / Beyond Fossil Fuels / Fairpicture
SPAIN – Terrassa
The municipality of Terrassa operates a public waste facility – a recycling centre – that already runs on solar. They want to expand its capacity by an additional 70kW, as part of a broader plan to keep the site powered entirely by clean, locally generated energy. The DSO won't approve the expansion.
Photo: Pau Sales of AMEP, the municipal energy agency, was filmed at the facility and at city council buildings in Terrassa.
Credit: Lucija Stojevic & Andres Bartos / Beyond Fossil Fuels / Fairpicture
TÜRKIYE – Çorum
The Saga cooperative was founded by 74 people to collectively process and export agricultural products – and to do it with clean energy. They installed a 300kWh solar system on their cold storage facility and founded Turkey's first energy cooperative. Now they want to expand. They've been waiting for over a year for available grid capacity.
Photo: A drone photograph captures an aerial view of the Saga Production and Consumer Cooperative’s Cold Storage Facility in Çorum, Turkey, on April 5, 2026.
Credit: Emre Çaylak / Beyond Fossil Fuels / Fairpicture
United Kingdom – Blackburn
Together Housing Group is one of the largest social housing providers in northern England – 31,000 homes, the vast majority still running on gas heating. Their goal is to remove fossil fuels entirely by 2035. To get there, they need heat pumps, solar, and batteries. But before any of that can happen at scale, the local distribution network operator has to complete a sequence of manual steps – surveys, meter checks, fuse upgrades – one property at a time. The process wasn't built for what the energy transition actually requires. Despite repeated attempts to find a solution together with the DNOs, nothing has moved.
Credit: Mat Johns (Cinematography) & Tobias Thiele (Creative Director) / Beyond Fossil Fuels / Fairpicture
What struck me when collaborating with Fairpicture on the Beyond Fossil Fuels project was their clear and open communication. They informed without prescribing and guided without dictating. This subject is complex and is being discussed internationally. Fairpicture assembled teams of experts and creatives to deliver an important project about modifying fundamental infrastructure in the 21st century.
Mat Johns, Fairpicture Visual Creator
Anna Leidreiter, BEN BürgerEnergie Nord eG talking to a tenant at the housing project in Neumünster, Germany
Credit: Tobias Thiele / Beyond Fossil Fuels / Fairpicture
Outcome
Beyond Fossil Fuels needed content that could do what a policy brief can't: make the problem feel real to someone who isn't already convinced. The videos and photography were designed to travel – across social media, into journalism, and into direct meetings with DSOs and policymakers.
Our local creator teams in each country produced the raw footage and interview material. Our creative director edited it into a final film and country-specific cuts – video testimonials, b-roll, and photography across four countries, delivered within a few weeks of the final shoot.
Because we work with local filmmakers rather than flying in a single international team, we were able to deliver this four-country production on a very tight budget – without compromising on quality or depth.
What our local creators bring isn't just knowledge of the location. They understand the regulatory context, speak the language, and know how to build trust quickly. For a campaign like this – where the goal isn't to cast villains but to show the real human cost of a system struggling to keep up – that access makes all the difference.
The videos are valuable beyond digital spaces. Beyond Fossil Fuels is planning to screen the series at energy and climate events, adding a compelling visual component that helps make complex technical topics more engaging.
We built our reputation on replacing imported Western creators with local visual artists – mostly in the Global South. This project proved the same model works just as well in Europe. Four countries, four local teams, one tight budget, one cohesive film. I'm genuinely proud of what this team pulled off. It opens something up for us.
Daniel Caspari, Business Developer – Fairpicture
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