SCIS met with European energy agencies from 16 countries

A few months back SCIS was invited by the European Energy Network (EnR) to their internal member meeting to share our story, what we do and what we ‘fight’ for. The event, hosted by the Swedish Energy Agency and chaired by the German Energy Agency in their role as this year’s EnR presidency, took place in Stockholm in the end of June. This  also gave me the opportunity to visit Stockholm for the first time. The Swedish capital is one of the European lighthouse cities or what we also call pilot or demonstration cities participating in smart cities projects co-funded by the EU with the aim to lead the way for other communities. Currently involved in the GrowSmarter project, Stockholm is at the helm of technological innovation in Europe with the vision to become the smartest city in the world by 2040. By all means, I wanted to see first-hand what is the feeling of walking along the streets of a city with such ambitions.

But let me tell you about the meeting first. There were representatives of national energy agencies of 16 countries, among which Germany, Spain, Greece and Romania. They gather regularly to discuss their progress in several working groups and invite outside organisations to stay up-to-date with innovative projects and policy developments and to form strategical partnerships. Besides SCIS, on the agenda this year, were Energy Cities and the Federal Agency for Energy Efficiency - BfEE (Germany).

Claire Roumet presented Energy Cities, the European Association of local authorities in energy transition, which represents more than 1000 local authorities from 30 countries, mainly municipalities, but also inter-municipal structures, local energy management agencies, municipal companies and groups of municipalities. She explored different pathways for collaboration between the national energy agencies and Energy Cities and its members in the future. Her talk was quite interesting for me, as their members are mostly small and medium-sized cities, while within SCIS I mainly work with large cities. I could draw a comparison with regards to the problems and challenges they are facing, as well as their capacity for implementing innovative solutions. Understanding the context in smart cities projects is vital, as if the measures don’t correspond with the size or the climate of a city, their implementation is destined to fail or at least not perform as expected. 

Jonas Geisler (BfEE) introduced two different innovative support schemes for energy efficiency in Germany. The STEP up! scheme is focusing on interventions for electricity savings in companies and municipalities. One important pillar of the scheme is monitoring of the performance of implemented interventions and full funding is only granted when the energy savings can be proven with monitoring data. The fact that it has such an important role with regards to funding in Germany shows the increasing importance of monitoring. This made a great impression on me as monitoring data and visualization is a big part of my role in SCIS. Needless to say, the understanding of its importance in the community increased my motivation in my daily work. It will be interesting to see if the developed approach will work in the future.

By the time I had to talk about SCIS, I had realized that European initiatives like ours are not part of the everyday work of the national energy agencies. These agencies focus more on the national level even though the network makes the effort to exchange experiences throughout Europe. Therefore, I tried to provide more context about the demonstration projects co-funded by the European Union and some background into the funding mechanism of the EU like Horizon2020. The discussion showed that the information provided by SCIS, including quantitative data as well as barriers and solutions from demonstration projects throughout Europe, can be equally valuable in a national context.

After the meeting we shared a dinner at the Stockholm riverside followed by a stroll around the city. I must say, their ambitions are well supported by the high standard of living and what the city has to offer in terms of smartness: intermodal public transport, high quality bicycle infrastructure, public places along the river as well as many parks throughout the city. I hope I will have the opportunity to come back soon and visit one of the several demonstration sites of GrowSmarter in Stockholm for a detailed peek inside their technological solutions.

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European Energy Network (EnR) is a voluntary network of national energy agencies in Europe and neighbouring countries which aims at promoting sustainable energy good and best practice. EnR strengthens cooperation between members and key European actors on issues concerning sustainable energy.