The first week of October has been particularly productive for AEGEA! The agency was selected to host a 3-day mission led by Julije Domac, President and REGEA Director, and Ivan Przulj, expert in REGEA.

The Expert Mission is takes place in the frame of ManagEnergy, an initiative of the European Commission that builds energy agencies’ capacity in designing and implementing sustainable energy projects but also making sure these grow into a sustainable business model.

On October 1st the Mission started with a meeting between the experts and AEGEA management team, represented by Kostas Komninos and Alkisti Florou. The meeting focused on AEGEA’s structure and service portfolio, having in mind new financing instruments and investment models being crafted for the post-2020 programming period.

The second day of the mission coincided with the Economist conference “2nd Sustainability Summit for SEE & the Mediterranean” where Julije Domac was invited to speak. This was an excellent opportunity for Mr Domac to highlight the role of energy agencies as drivers and delivery agents of the energy transition in SEE in particular, where the sector should be further empowered so as to assist national actors with the uptake of sustainable energy investments.

In the aftermath of the event, a meeting took place between AEGEA, the experts and the Ministry for Environment and Energy. Discussion revolved around the need to strengthen the role of local and regional agencies as facilitators of the energy transition, especially in topics like the aggregation of small-scale projects, the uptake of EPC and establishment of energy communities.

For Greek islands in particular, AEGEA stood out as an important structure that can facilitate such processes, since it has a good understanding and outreach capacity towards island local ecosystems of stakeholders, though its close collaboration with DAFNI Network. The agency is well positioned to take on the role of facilitator for the identification and maturation of projects, mobilization of financing etc., something that was acknowledged by the Ministry.

The Expert Mission ended with a full day of knowledge-transfer and vision-making exercises with the whole of the AEGEA team. Following a presentation about ManagEnergy and Fedarene, and an overview of both REGEA and AEGEA projects and services, participants had the opportunity to exchange information on preparing successful ELENA/PDA bids on street lighting and buildings’ retrofitting and brainstorm on future joint projects around electro-mobility, energy efficiency and more.

To sum up, this was a very enriching experience for AEGEA which filled us all with motivation to continue working on making the energy transition happen at the local level!