SEMS Site Słubice

The following information has been gathered as part of the CONCERTO Premium policy research.

Benefits of CONCERTO:

Key benefits:

The emphasis for SEMS was on energy management / “energy accountancy” using appropriate energy management systems.

Skill development:

Information and educational measures mainly targeted young people and encompassed renewable energy, energy efficiency, environmental effects and economic aspects. Measures addressed schools and conferences and field trips were also held. The 4th SEMS Summer School from 28-29 April 2011 in Słubice, was a great success: 170 participants from Poland and Germany, most of them students, followed the lectures which gave a basic introduction into sustainable energy technologies and their application in communities and regions. The lectures of both summer schools are available on the SEMS website. There was also a scientific conference “Renewable Energy – development prospects for communities” on 27 April 2011, with about 110 participants from Poland and Germany attending.

Local economic effects:

A few new jobs at the new wind-farm were created, that will continue to exist.

Barriers encountered:

Technical barriers:

Large-scale integration of RES and EE in communities with more than some 1.000 inhabitants requires a comprehensive technical and organisational management of a large number of distributed energy generation, consumption and eventually storage units. It also requires the comprehensive involvement of a large number of individuals and different groups of society, including local companies. Solutions were to employ good energy management systems with 3 components: decentralised Energy Management System for technical energy management, EMAS for organisational energy management and MFM (Material Flow Management) for further optimising energy management.

Economic barriers:

Because of the difficult economic situation of the municipality it was a challenge to invest in public buildings. An energy performance assessment of several buildings was made, but they could not be refurbished within the project duration. In fact in the end the project targets had to be reviewed and only one school was refurbished and equipped with a biomass boiler. However, further schools should be refurbished after the end of SEMS. There is no technical investment for this type of action. Unfortunately, solid biomass is very expensive in Poland and it is problematic to convince citizens to invest. Financial constraints hamper interest in private solar installations. Solutions: The ECM effort is to change this situation and to conduct the city administration to refurbish public buildings. In connection with looking for additional sources to finance solar installation a contact to Fundacja Poszanowania Energii (Energy Conservation Foundation) and the company HETMAN CB that cooperates with the foundation was established. Both offer an integrated financial support up to 70 per cent of the installed solar systems. Because this solution is very attractive it aroused enormous interest among house owners.

Social barriers:

For all four SEMS-projects the involvement of citizens was very poor in the beginning as a result of the time-pressure during the preparation of the SEMS funding proposal, but also as a result of lack of insight in the need of citizen involvement during the preparation of SEMS, notably in Weilerbach and Słubice.

Administrative barriers:

In Słubice the integration of the Energy Change Management in the administration structure of the community was difficult in organisational and contractual respects. After a change of the Mayor in Słubice the procedure concerning selecting a strategic partner for ZEC (regional district heating owner) has been stopped and the offer of a company to build a biomass heat and power plant has not been taken into consideration. The earlier plan for wood pellet boiler house in nursery schools did not receive approval by new authorities of Słubice.

Success factors identified:

Technical success Factors:

The CONCERTO programme obliged the SEMS core regions to undertake comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of their processes. Use of thermal imaging to identify retrofitting needs on existing educational buildings was helpful.

Social success factors:

The Energy Change Managers (ECMs) with responsibility for information and communication activities, developing subsidy programmes and coordinating of local project activities in the core communities with the local partners. The intensive consultation activities of the energy change managers and the various communication activities were very successful in promoting uptake of relatively inexpensive measures such as installations of solar-thermal collectors, biomass heating systems, energy-saving heating pumps, etc. – even if no financial support was provided. Communication processes must successively build on implementation processes, focusing on the target group most relevant at the given stage in the process. The first target group would be people who are in a position to multiply support, later it could be “blockers” that hamper certain developments in the implementation process. The Consultancy centre was open for inhabitants every Thursday, from 12.00 till. 16.00. The consultant working within the project, Mr Józef Cygan, provided advice and consultations for the citizens of the municipality on energy saving and on the use of renewable energy sources.

Institutional success factors:

The project adhered to a well-defined framework designed for regional energy transition initiatives, which had been developed under the preceding project “100RENET”. 100RENET defined 6 steps: preparation, regional analysis, definition of targets, regional action programme, implementation of measures and projects and monitoring and evaluation (with several iterations of the later steps).

Economic success factors:

As a result of the close proximity to Germany and the fact that a foreign investor is willing to invest money in the [municipality], an attempt was made to find a location for a 2-3MW photovoltaic park. The investor is interested in building a photovoltaic park - 15MWp. The municipality has taken action to find a building site for this investment that will meet investor´s expectations and it starts the procedure concerning changes to the spatial plan. For the future an even larger project has now been planned.

Other:

Proximity to Germany and a wish to learn from Germany in the run-up of joining the EU, collaboration with these neighbours was pushed, e.g. a joint conference was held. Even though Słubice was different to the 3 other partners (only a single municipality, not a whole region), the SEMS consortium worked very well – Słubice had access to good practice examples in the partnering communities and thus proof that it could be done.

Business models used:

ZEC, a regional district heating operator also conducted energy surveys of educational buildings and blocks of flats and prepared retrofitting strategies. Because of financial problems of the municipality, for the installation of 250 KW pellet boiler, installation of the second heating peak-load oil and back-up boiler (300KW) and the replacement of hot water pipes between building (for a leisure building) a private-public model was adopted. This model enables to arrange the capital costs and ongoing running costs into installments. The repayment period will be 5 years.

Legacy – follow-on projects:

There are a number of activities that are still ongoing that grew out of SEMS: The municipality has applied for funding to refurbish 3 further schools for which energy audits had been done under SEMS. At the end of the project there were also plans for the municipality to build a 2MW biogas plant and a 1MW agricultural biogas plant. The Local CONCERTO coordinator was instrumental for both of these projects – he also helped to convince the mayor to set aside 230ha of land for a 120 MW PV installation. The mayor has promised to employ an energy manager to continue similar work within the municipality.