On the 18th of October, the Romanian CITYnvest workshop took place in Bucharest. It was organised by CITYnvest in partnership with Finacon. In the first part, Lieven Vanstraelen from Energinvest explained the key ingredients of financing and operational models for energy efficiency and the highlights of the comparison report of 26 case studies across Europe. Ivanka Pandelieva from Sofia Energy Centre drew recommendations for local authorities in Romania, based on the similar experiences in Bulgaria. Several Romanian regional authorities expressed their interests in setting up a one-stop-shop model, similar to the one, which is now developed in the pilot region Rhodope.
“Energy efficiency is clearly a priority investment axis for the European Commission”, Ionut Trinca, the representative of the national Ministry of Regional Development said. The Ministry launched several calls for proposals, including for the residential sector, and an open consultation to tackle the building stock.
Later on, Daniela Ionescu shared the experiences of the EBRD bank regarding working with local authorities for energy efficiency investments. She focused mainly on a model combining soft loans and free technical assistance. She also illustrated the barriers existing in Romania by the example of some EPC projects for hospitals, schools and kindergartens which failed due to the complexity and contradictory interests, which blocked investments from happening. In her opinion, the main issue was the EUROSTAT guidance note published in August 2015 that accounted EPC by default as public debt.
The round table debate focused on the needs of municipalities. One of the main outcomes was a decision to develop a letter of recommendations, which would be delivered to the relevant national ministries. During the workshop, participants expressed a strong conviction that they need to join forces and act together in order to have their arguments heard by the different levels of governance and accelerate investments in energy efficiency in Romania.
More information can be found on the dedicated web page.
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