Interview with youth candidate - Tanika Scherbinski #7 Amersfoort

Who are you and where are you from?

My name is Tanika, I am 25 years old and currently live in Amersfoort. I started living there about three years ago, because it was convenient at the time. I stayed there because it's just a super nice city. I deal a lot with renewable energy. That is my passion and that is what I want to focus on.

What do you do in daily life?

I work full-time as an energy consultant. This is very varied work, but I spend about 80 to 90 per cent of the time working on solar panel projects. These can be subsidy applications or realising solar panels on the roofs of companies at their own expense. We are also working with an investor to build solar fields. Then we are really talking about hectares of solar panels, preferably as large as possible.

How did you get interested in renewable energy?

I was about 15 years old when my father was eager to see Al Gore's film on climate change . I had never heard anything about climate change before that, it was completely unknown to me. So I also didn't know what the film was about or who the guy was, but I was curious. As the film progressed, I heard more and more new things and I just found it so shocking. I wondered what the fuck was going on and why no one was doing anything about this. Why are we letting this happen? It was very clear to me then: the cause of this problem lies in the use of fossil fuels. Since I like to tackle problems at the root cause, it was very clear to me that I wanted to get involved in renewable energy. From then on, in secondary school, I started working on projects on sustainable energy whenever I could and eventually went on to study it.

I started a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences. In this study, we only had four compulsory subjects and it was mainly focused on interdisciplinarity. We were also allowed to choose a major and I chose Energy and Sustainability. Within that, I had a lot of room to choose. You could choose subjects from all sorts of directions to prepare yourself for the Master you want to do. That way, you could look as widely as possible at what you like and learn from all these different disciplines.

After my bachelor, I did a Master's in Sustainable Development with a focus on sustainable energy. What I really liked about that is that the principle of sustainability was treated very broadly. So it was about the theories behind sustainability and behind sustainable policy, but also the principle of energy transition. This allowed you to approach the climate problem and sustainability from a lot of angles. So I can also look at the issues in my energy specialisation from many ways. You can't solve a complex problem from just one theory or approach, so that's why I like being able to see it from different perspectives. And it connects: I can talk to technicians as well as policymakers and find the link between them.

So what I like most about my job is the diversity and the fact that we can bring about a lot of changes in a short time. On the one hand, I stood on the roof of a number of clients' houses to talk to them about what should be there. A few months later, I was back on that roof and it was completely full of solar panels. On the other side, the slightly slower side, I talk to municipalities about their ambitions. Where do they have a field left to make a solar farm, or where could a wind turbine be placed in theory? So what I do is very broad, but it all comes down to that one important subject: sustainable energy.

What would you like to bring from your work into the council?

I can bring a lot of knowledge and experience from practice. In Amersfoort, for instance, there is a lot of discussion about building a solar meadow and I see a lot of opportunities in this about how we can solve this in better ways. What I would most like to have done in Amersfoort is to have a study conducted into whether solar panels can be installed on all municipal buildings and, if so, to fill them completely with them immediately! The municipality should take responsibility for this. This is a very easy, small step that the municipality could take to show that we should both fill up the roofs and build a solar park. The municipality should lead by example in this.

How did you join DWARS and what do you do for DWARS now?

I became a member at 18, but only became active when an energy committee was set up and I had moved to Amersfoort. Eventually, I also became chairman of this committee. That was really super fun, but also quite a challenge. We sometimes call it the beta committee of DWARS, and there was not so very a lot of interest in it. It was a small club with dedicated people. The nice thing was to be able to discuss the themes around energy and raw materials with people who felt the same way about it, but had different ideas to fill it in. This gave me a lot of inspiration and new ideas, and we ended up creating a super cool vision piece together.

I am currently on the Candidates' Committee. We have a very nice, diverse club of people who will soon be holding interviews with prospective board members. I am very curious to see what that will be like and who will apply for it! I learnt a lot at DWARS, for example organisational structure, but the most important thing I think is the sense of belonging. Everyone was always very motivated and enthusiastic. You can have the most heated discussions at DWARS about the most minimal details and afterwards it's still super fun. Even when I hadn't been for a while and I came back, it really felt like coming home. That's a good feeling.

What connects you to the city of Amersfoort?

My feeling for Amersfoort started to grow slowly. I came to live there because I wanted to live centrally, but not in Utrecht. Amersfoort is not too busy and not too expensive and when I first moved there, I really liked the fact that everything was close by and very accessible. When I started exploring the city more, a whole world opened up for me. I used to live in Lelystad and there was nothing there, whereas in Amersfoort there is a lot. I'm actually still discovering the whole city. It has so many different aspects. For instance, we have a very nice old centre with beautiful city walls, which I love a lot. If you go a little further outside the centre, there are suddenly super-modern Vinex neighbourhoods with replicated canal houses. Of course, Amersfoort also has a very nice group of enthusiastic GroenLinksers.

What would you like for Amersfoort?

I would like to see a more ambitious policy around sustainability. The current college has just announced that they are not going to meet the targets around sustainability and then I wonder why they are not making more of an effort. It has to be done now, it won't make sense in 20 years' time. That's why I want to focus so much on this, but ultimately I think all themes are very important. After all, everything makes sense and everything together makes the whole. I am not the person to talk to about sport, but sport does have a very important place in the municipality. The same goes for finance. I don't find this a very interesting topic myself, but you need finances to achieve everything else. It really is a puzzle, where everything hangs together. If I get to pick one piece then it is sustainability, but for the rest I will fight just as hard.

I think we are doing well at the moment. We were recently told by the environmental federation that we have the greenest programme of all parties participating in Amersfoort, with a few points more than the number two. We are really very proud of that!

The biggest challenge I see is the starting position we have now. The current college is already indicating that they are not going to meet the targets and have done very little, so that means we have to push even harder. The pressure is on now, but apparently they have not seen the opportunities or had the will to make it happen. That is why we would like to form a good coalition, which we are in with GroenLinks, to get that movement going and make big steps. For instance, I would love to see one or more wind turbines realised in Amersfoort. I would also like the municipality to start a movement to motivate homeowners to contribute to sustainable goals. That is perhaps the nicest thing of all: If you can drop a pebble in the pond and then see the ripples.

What is the GroenLinks vision for you?

I always feel that GroenLinks stands for the common good. With us, it doesn't matter where you come from, what colour you are, or anything else. We want that everyone got it right. Everyone has the same rights and we fight for everyone. I think that is the most beautiful thing.