On July 4th, experts from the public administration, analytical centres, non-governmental organizations and private businesses from Romania and Bulgaria shared experiences on best policy practices for climate action in transport and buildings. The discussions focused mostly on replicability of policies with proven success in reducing GHG emissions in the Visegrad countries in Romania and Bulgaria.
The event was organized within the framework of the CEE Climate Policy Frontier project, supported by the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) and implemented by WiseEuropa, Climate Strategies, Expert Forum and Climate Analytics.
The workshop was opened by Otilia Nutu, Policy Analyst at Expert Forum and Aleksander Śniegocki, Project Manager of Energy and Climate at WiseEuropa, who highlighted good practices in climate action in transport and building sectors in CEE region and discussed differences between Romania and Bulgaria vs the Visegrad group. After that, participants were divided into parallel working groups on transport and buildings. The transport group covered topics on cleaner public and private vehicle fleets and electromobility, whereas the buildings group focused on energy efficiency in buildings and sustainable heating sources.
During the transport group discussion, Mihai Stoica, president of 2Celsius Romania, Radu Dudau, president of Energy Policy Group Romania, Atanas Georgiev from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria and George Badea from EON Romania provided their perspectives on Romanian and Bulgarian current state of affairs and policies. In the next session, which was devoted to the buildings sector, Bogdan Anton, expert of the energy regulator ANRE, Georgi Stefanov from WWF Bulgaria, Serban Danciu from Buildings Performance Institute Europe, Mihai Moia president of Romania Energy Efficiency Association and Alexandru Moldoveanu from the Municipalities Association of Romania shared Romanian and Bulgarian experiences with buildings retrofit programs, which took off just in recent years in both countries, unlike in the Visegrad group.
The last part of the event was devoted to the adequacy of current good practices in the light of Paris Agreement compatible emissions reduction pathways. During the presentation, Aleksander Śniegocki introduced the first results of the assessment, prepared by Climate Analytics, and obtained initial feedback from participants from Romania and Bulgaria.
As in Warsaw, the workshop offered a rare opportunity for an exchange of ideas and policy practices among 6 countries, focusing on the differences among countries and institutional constraints to implementation. Participants welcomed the exchange, developed new contacts and expressed their wish to engage with Visegrad experts with future opportunities.
The European Climate Initiative (EUKI) is a project financing instrument by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). Its implementation is supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. It is the overarching goal of the EUKI to foster climate cooperation within the European Union (EU) in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
