March 2024 – November 2024
This project is supported by Heinrich Boell Stiftung. Energy efficiency improvement is very important for Serbian society as it may deliver simultaneously on energy savings, security of energy supply, reducing the impact of the energy sector on the environment and climate change, sustainable use of natural and other resources, increasing the competitiveness of the economy, improving conditions for economic development, and above all reducing energy poverty. At the same time overall financing of public goods is very limited, accountability of public authorities and professionals is low as well as transparency of policy making and implementation.
The aim is to increase capacities that will help us to address the challenge of directing extremely limited public resources to most effective and just uses for the much-needed energy efficiency improvements. In a very complex and challenging political environment that we have in Serbia in 2024 the most promising path is to work on the capacities of future public good agents such as newly elected representatives of citizens in local (and national assemblies) with limited prior political and policy experience, students from different disciplines and research journalists. RES Foundation will seek cooperation with the Faculty of Political Sciences as possible interlocutor and will also look for support form HBS office in Belgrade to reach target groups.
Empowering those actors may help future Serbian society of good energy to be more capable to achieve the demanding goals of energy transition by also looking at the existing increasingly voluminous support schemes and by learning from its design and implementation. The focus will be on transparency of the design processes and on the effectiveness of the design of the two schemes that both involved IFIs and one involves the EU funding as well:
- Case study of the SURCE project implemented by the central and local governments in the Republic of Serbia
- Case study of the Public ESCO project implemented by the central and local governments in the Republic of Serbia
