The tenth International Energy and Investment Days were held on November 3 and 4 at the Novi Sad Fair. In the days when the looming climate crisis and the necessity of the transition to green energy are in the focus of the whole world due to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the two-day event provided an opportunity for various stakeholders to discuss and learn about ways they can accelerate the green transition within their communities and enhance creation of a sustainable energy sector, thus contributing to the global combat to preserve our planet.
The opening ceremony was attended by the Director General of the Novi Sad Fair Slobodan Cvetković, the Mayor of Novi Sad Miloš Vučević, the Provincial Secretary for Energy Ognjen Bjelić, the Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the Western Balkans Matteo Colangeli, and the Deputy Prime Minister and the minister of mining and energy Zorana Mihajlović.
In addition to the exhibition part of the event, which presented companies, institutions and local governments with projects in the field of energy, the congress segment offered visitors seven panel discussions in which participated leading experts from Serbia and abroad.
In panel 1 panelists discussed about support for improvement of energy efficiency in households. The state, with the help of local self-governments, began to look for models for co-financing energy efficiency in households, and experiences were shared by energy managers from Kragujevac and Kraljevo, as well as a representative of the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities. A representative of the Profi sistem also spoke on the topic from his point of view, and the panel was moderated by Faruk Suljević, a representative of the City of Novi Pazar.
The second panel of the first day was dedicated to the program of support to reduction of pollution from individual sources. Moderator Tanja Popovicki talked with representatives of local self-governments, who are among the leaders in the pursuit for air quality improvement, about subsidizing measures to reduce air pollution from individual sources in households; about the course, previous experiences, challenges and ways to improve measures and outcomes.
Among the topics of the panel was the project of improving the energy efficiency of public buildings in Vojvodina; a project in which the energy managers from the RES Foundation, Nikola Vujović and Željko Zečević, are a part of. A separate panel covered a significant topic of renewable energy sources and available capacities for their implementation.
The last panel of the first day, led by Jasminka Young, called “Osunčajmo Srbiju (Let’s sunbathe Serbia)”, was dedicated to solar panels and the ways in which the citizens of Serbia can become prosumers. A new law and regulation has been adopted, which significantly simplifies the procedure according to which citizens can procure solar panels and thus become prosumers. The conclusion of the panel participants was that there is interest of the citizens, but that faster procedure and additional explanations are needed.
The International Energy Agency has prepared and published a scenario for the global energy sector with net zero carbon emissions in 2050, which depicts an urgent and comprehensive change in energy based on renewable energy sources and energy efficiency. The first panel of the second day of the International Energy and Investment Days, moderated by Aleksandar Macura, dealt extensively with the topic of low-carbon development planning at the local level; framework, tools for the preparation of the Low Carbon Development Strategy, energy efficiency of multi-family buildings and the role of district heating in low-carbon development.
The last panel of the event, co-organized by E3 International, dealt with energy crops and the role of energy plantations in the energy transition process, with the participation of panelists both from the country and abroad.
The Novi Sad Fair organized the tenth International Energy and Investment Days with the support of the Provincial Secretariat for Energy, Construction and Transport and City of Novi Sad, while RES Foundation was the partner in the congress segment organization.
Full programme available here.
