Training seminar on the benefits of RES

One of the purposes of the seminar was establishment of successful partnerships between the City of Zagreb and the Zagreb County on one side and Vienna region on the other side. The Croatian regional administrations and representatives of the North-West Croatian Regional Energy Agency exchanged experience in promoting RES projects with their Austrian colleagues from the Austrian Energy Agency and the City of Vienna. In discussion, the idea on organizing a RES study tour in Austria appeared. As a consequence, AEA and EIHP organized a visit to the Energy Park Bruck and biomass cogeneration plant in Simmering (Vienna), as Austrian good practice examples.

Regional education seminar preparation started at the beginning of 2009, by choosing the topic of the regional seminar and possible lecturers. Support of heat and cool production from renewable energy sources (RES-H/C) was chosen, due to importance of the theme and expecting preparation of sub-laws for supporting RES-H/C in Croatia. Furthermore, lecturers were contacted, in order to cover RES policy in Croatia, existing supporting options from Croatian Fund for Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency, best RES practice from Vienna region, experiences in RES project implementation in City of Zagreb and Zagreb County, as well as main RES for heat and cool production (biomass, solar and geothermal heat pumps).

In the next step, the target group was recognized. An invitation by e-mail was sent to the companies and individuals acting in the energy sector: policy makers at national/regional/local policy makers and administrations, financial institutions, RES industry, RES developers, RES associations, regional energy agency and RES researchers. Beside the direct e-mails, the announcement about the regional education seminar was issued on the EIHP web-site.

Information about the seminar (in Croatian), as well as all presentations, can be found on the following EIHP's web page:

http://www.eihp.hr/hrvatski/projekti/support_ers.html

while brief information on IEE Support_ERS project in English can be found on the web page:

http://www.eihp.hr/english/projekti/support_ers.html

The venue of the seminar was in the appropriate multimedia conference room of Energy Institute Hrvoje Po'ar. Translation was organized for participants from our partner Vienna region Ms Silke Mader (Austrian Energy Agency) and Mr Herbert Ritter (City of Vienna), as well as for representative of the Slovak Innovation and Energy Agency Ivana Duricova.

Before the start of the seminar, participants received the SUPPORT_ERS leaflet, the IEE leaflet  "The Power to Innovate", the brief SUPPORT_ERS project description, two SUPPORT_ERS press releases, the Evaluation form and the Agenda of the seminar. The number of attendees was 39, including 11 lecturers.

The presentations can be found here.

Presentation, Silke Mader, Austrian Energy Agency
Presentation, Herbert Ritter, City of Vienna
A meeting agenda can be found here.