Emerging Partnership for Energy Leadership
Over 150 committed members of the Central and Eastern European Sustainable Energy Network will convene in Tartu, Estonia to tackle climate change
The sustainable energy conference ‘Partnership for New Energy Leadership’ will be held on 23 – 25 January 2019 in Tartu, Estonia, hosted by University of Tartu and the Estonian University of Life Sciences. The event will focus on building an energy-conscious low-carbon future in Central and Eastern Europe bringing together leaders, professionals and activists dedicated to energy transition. This includes key speakers from the European Commission, the Covenant of Mayors, Estonian Government, as well as the individual regions will share good practices, lessons learnt and future missions.
Nowadays climate change is one of the most serious threats to humanity. In response to this, EU governments are pressed to create policy frameworks that enable sustainable long-term transformation of the energy sector. Reduction of economy’s energy intensity, especially in CEE countries that have lagged behind, requires effort by all sectors of society, from government, to private companies and individual citizens. Thus, for the EU reach its ambitious goals, stakeholder engagement must be improved. This includes strengthening public participation processes and bottom-up movement in policy development, which would enable local communities to cooperate with policy makers to make change happen.
An important actor in this process is the Central and Eastern European Sustainable Energy Network (CEESEN), which has brought together more than 2400 members who are actively working to achieve these goals. CEESEN provides a useful model that communities can follow to develop long term visons with clear roadmaps and focused action plans for implementation. The conference is also the final project meeting of the EU-funded Partnership for New Energy Leadership PANEL 2050 project. PANEL has developed tools that can be used to promote sustainable energy development in the CEE region.
Conference participants will discuss expanding the CEESEN network, digital solutions for promoting sustainable energy as well as social aspects of energy transition including energy poverty in CEE. Participants will have the chance to exchange ideas on their shared interests and assess upcoming funding opportunities like the Interreg, Erasmus and Horizon 2020 which can be used to support actions for shifting towards a low-carbon economy.
What is CEESEN?
The Central and Eastern European Sustainable Energy Network (CEESEN) was established under the Partnership for New Energy Leadership PANEL 2050 project (grant nr 696173). Laying the foundations for energy transformation of Central and East European economies and transforming them into low-carbon ones by the middle of the century is a main goal. CEESEN network now supports local communities in 11 countries from Estonia to Macedonia to meet global and European decarbonisation targets by 2050. CEESEN network helps to engage stakeholders more actively in the process of energy transformation while targeting groups with specific trainings and organizing meetings and exchanges between regions.