National workshop on energy planning and financial instruments - Enviros

Within a framework of the FIRECE project, a Czech national workshop on a topic of energy planning and financial instruments took place in Prague, 12/12/2018. It was organized by the project partner ENVIROS and attended by 15 participants from central government institutions, banking sector and the hosting organization.

In the beginning, they were informed about FIRECE project and its activities with particular focus on training activities and events. The training course was described and selected training modules demonstrated in the on-line e-learning system (https://firece.enviros.cz).

Ms. Vladimira Henelova (ENVIROS) introduced a system of energy planning that exist in the Czech Republic, and explained links between national, regional and local energy plans. She discussed financial possibilities of energy plans operators at different levels.

Mr. Pavel Ruzicka (ENVIROS) gave examples of financial instruments, which are used in project partner countries and regions. In particular, revolving funds existing in Italian regions were discussed.

In the following presentations, the speakers provided an overview of financial instruments used in the Czech Republic. They included:

• Soft loans for energy efficiency projects introduced by the Ministry of Industry and operated by the Czech Moravian Guarantee and Development Bank.
• Soft loans used and planned by the Ministry for Environment to complement grants from the Operational Programme Environment.
• Credit lines of international financial institutions that were operated by Czech commercial banks.
• Experience with combination of Energy Performance Contracting and grants from the Operational Programme Environment.

During the workshop, the participants discussed possibilities of wider use of financial instruments to support energy efficiency projects in the Czech Republic.

It was concluded that financial instruments will definitely play a more important role in the next programming period. However as they provide a lower support compared to grants, an administrative burden of their operation have to be decreased for companies. A competition between grants and financial instruments must be avoided.

Project is financed from Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE programme and lasts from 01/07/2017 to 30/06/2020.