Sustainable Energy Action Plans in Latvia
Regional Cooperation, Best Practices & Financing Options

• Workshop Programme and Presentations [EN / LV]

ManagEnergy held a capacity building workshop in Riga on 28 January 2011. Some 30 participants were present in addition to workshop speakers, with participants coming primarily from municipalities across the country, local and regional energy agencies and other local energy actors such as universities and NGOs. The workshop was kindly hosted by the Ministry of Environment, and organised with the support of ManagEnergy’s local partner Zemgale Regional Energy Agency (ZREA).

The workshop focused on the development and financing of Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs) in Latvia (with a particular focus on public lighting, municipal and residential building renovations) and covered in particular:

• regional coordination of sustainable energy (SE) planning;
• the development of Sustainable Energy Action Plans under the Covenant of Mayors Initiative;
• the implementation of international projects in public lighting & building renovation; and
• EU Funds and other innovative financing mechanisms for SE investments.

Workshop Conclusions

The workshop included presentations on Local and Regional Energy Planning from Mr. Nils Daugaard (ENNEREG Project Coordinator) and how such work is being supported via EU initiatives. Ms. Katarzyna Grecka from the Baltic Energy Agency (BAPE) shared the experience of the Pomerania Region in Poland, while Mr Prisis of ZREA led a discussion on the role of Regional Energy Agencies in Developing Municipal Energy Action Plans, and ZREA’s experience in this area.

A key workshop focus was looking at how Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) can play a role, including a presentation from the ChangeBest project from Ms Dagnina Blumberga (Riga Technical University/Ekodoma) on promoting the development of an energy efficiency service market.

The financing session benefitted from presentations from two government ministries. Mr. Valdis Bisters from the Ministry of Environment presented the work that it is being carried out through the Climate Change Financial Instrument (CCFI) for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in Latvia, and recent and upcoming calls for proposals in this area, while Mr. Edmunds Valantis, Director of EU Funds Implementation Department at the Ministry of Finance, presented the EU and national funds available.

These presentations and the discussion were very beneficial for municipalities in seeing national and EU financing options to fund sustainable energy initiative (either within SEAPs for Covenant of Mayor signatory cities or for cities outside of the Covenant), for example increasing understanding on the areas of the Climate Change Financial Instrument (CCFI) of particular interest to municipalities (e.g. ongoing energy efficiency projects in municipal buildings (LVL 26 million of project funding awarded to-date), and upcoming Open Calls for Proposals to be announced in areas such as low energy housing, use of RES for reducing gas emissions, efficient street lighting projects in municipalities etc (comprising in total approx. LVL 50 million in funding). 

The discussion raised many interesting issues – for example in terms of setting up for carrying out energy efficient refurbishments of multi residential housing complexes - is it better to use ESCOs or to take credit and to renovate the house by apartment owners themselves - what are the pros and cons in each case? The workshop was of particular benefit to small municipalities, many of which prior to the workshop were not aware of approaches to energy planning, of the benefits of SEAP development, the various funding options, and the learning and insight from experience in Denmark and Poland. The discussion within the workshop once more emphasised that for the small municipalities in many cases it is difficult to participate in large-scale projects and emphasised the role of regional energy agencies in helping to pool efforts to develop larger projects.