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 As part of its ongoing commitment to energy-efficiency education and outreach, the Alliance to Save Energy recently convened a regional workshop in Kiev, Ukraine February 6-7, 2006. This two-day workshop, funded by the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), gathered over 100 people including policy makers, government officials, housing and municipal association representatives, and regional energy-efficiency experts to discuss strategies for increasing awareness for the need to develop residential energy-efficiency program in the region.
A rapidly decaying infrastructure across much of Central and Eastern Europe combined with insufficient funding and inadequate building maintenance presents many challenges for residential energy efficiency. The recent workshop attempted to isolate the most common barriers as well as discover the many opportunities for introducing more widespread acceptance of energy-efficient practices in the residential sector.
The most commonly identified barriers to broad implementation of efficiency in the region include an inadequate legislative structure to promote energy efficiency, relatively few project financing mechanisms, and a lack of technical knowledge among municipal management and local housing authorities who oversee maintenance and repairs for multifamily buildings.
The workshops recognized several opportunities to remove legislative and technical barriers that would provide immediate and often low-cost results. Participants also exchanged best practices for encouraging energy efficiency and increasing awareness through public education campaigns which would serve to inform consumers and stimulate government bodies to implement proper building codes, appliance standards and institute a more comprehensive outlook toward the broader social and economic benefits of energy efficiency.
In conjunction with this workshop, the Alliance to Save Energy presented information from an ongoing USAID-funded study. “Energy Efficiency and Urban Residential Utility Affordability Study” explores the potential for energy efficiency to offset utility costs for disadvantaged Eastern European communities. In preparing this study, the Alliance hopes to make the policy case to governments in the region, as well as donors, financial institutions, and NGOs, that proper implementation of energy-efficiency practices can increase the affordability of utility services for low income households.
It is expected that the information generated during the workshop will assist local governments when drafting energy policies, provide an alternative means for reducing dependence on foreign energy imports, and offer a strategy for providing affordable energy to the population in the region.
Information from the workshop, together with the presentation materials, will be published in a discussion paper describing common energy-efficiency problems in the residential sector, solutions, case studies and recommendations. The guidebook will be made available to the public through the Alliance to Save Energy and REEEP partners and on the web site: www.munee.org. The Alliance would like to thank Siemens Building Technologies for providing funding to help make this workshop possible.
For more information please contact Olga Chistyakova by email.
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