30 Sep 2018, 17:55
  • Rose-Anne
    Rose-Anne Clermont is an award-winning freelance journalist writing on migration and environmentalism. Her work has been published by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel, Berliner Zeitung, Die Zeit, and U.S.-based media including The New York Times, NPR and USA Today. Rose-Anne is currently a freelance editor and trainer for media development projects focused on environmental conservation in East Africa.
  • Martha
    Martha Otwinowski is Journalism Network Manager at Clean Energy Wire. She develops network strategies for international climate policy and energy reporters.

Biomass, deforestation and EU-regulations: a Romanian-Polish cross border story

Protected forest in Eastern Europe.
Protected forest in Eastern Europe. Source: [Friedberg]/ Adobe Stock
Is biomass an attractive way to diversify fosssil fuel dependent countries' energy portfolios? Or the root of the deforestation in protected nature reservoirs? Two journalists from Romania and Poland teamed up and looked closely at the relationship between EU-regulations on biomass, deforestation, and the retail sector. Read up their published stories and find out what they learnt from working together on this border-crossing story.

Raul Cazan, freelance journalist as well as founder of the website 2 Celsius Network, and Jakub Wiech from Energetyka 24 worked together on this story supported by the first CLEW cross-border journalism grant. Find links to their articles below.

Rose-Anne spoke to Raul about how the cross-border approach made a difference to the story:

How did your process change, if at all, as soon as you crossed a border?
Once I got to Poland, I enjoyed a wider openness of researchers and people from academia. This helped our work a lot as we were able to frame our stories intellectually.

How did working in a cross-border collaboration deepen your understanding of your subject?
The network I founded, 2Celsius, works with cross-border collaborations between environmental journalists in Central and Eastern Europe. Given the complexity of the matter, my Polish counterpart had a massive role in enlightening me with regards to the intricacies of Polish energy policies, which revealed specific differences between the two post-communist countries.

Articles by Raul and Jakub

Raul Cazan's stories

Jakub Wiech's stories

Journalism for the energy transition

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