The Network of Good Energy’s founding cities and municipalities have been successfully working on improving their local energy policies for many years. Accountable approach to energy managements, monitoring of consumption, responsible management, results that have been recognized and rewarded through new arrangements with international partners – that’s what makes the municipality of Vrbas and cities of Niš and Pirot the champions of good energy.

 Vrbas – Step by step towards establishing) a comprehensive energy management system at the local level

 Most of the municipalities in Serbia hasn’t been dealing with energy consumption and energy efficiency as long as the legal framework wasn’t established through the adoption of the Energy Efficiency Law in 2013. However, the story of energy management in Vrbas starts a couple years before that, in municipality’s Directorate for Construction. Nikola Vujović and Željko Zečević, engineers who had been working in the Directorate at the time, had for years been witnessing bad practice in local energy policy, resulting in high energy consumption.

Having the benefits of energy efficiency in mind, as well as its potential, they have started introducing the energy efficiency on their own and step by step. It took them two years to scan all the buildings under jurisdiction of their municipality, do the measuring and create an energy consumption database. They were doing this work using their own personal resources and in their free time.

Their work has been recognized by the Provincial Secretariat first, following the officials of their local municipality, which have incorporated energy management into their Development strategy. Their municipality became a part of the Exchange 3 program, together with two more municipalities. Through this program, they have received a consumption monitoring progress. Having years of experience in monitoring consumption, Nikola and Željko have voluntarily improved this tool on their own as well.

 There are many services offered by the Energy Management Office: 
- Consumption control, fine tuning of the system, controlling the users’ behavior in the system, controlling the heating systems;
- Regular system maintenance;
- Implementing energy efficiency measures;
- Education and training for the system participants:
* Education of officials dealing with finances in public buildings, on entering relevant data into software;
*Training for staff directly involved with heating systems;
*Education and training for citizens about energy efficiency: promotional campaigns and cooperation with private partners in energy efficiency sector.

The energy management system in Vrbas is unique for its public lighting database as well, containing all the data, to the last lightbulb. All the light poles are listed and entered into the system, the data on power and consumption of all the lamps as well. The project for reporting malfunctions of the system via Internet is currently being developed.

The Energy Management Office had one more service in the portfolio – providing energy certification services on the market (developing energy efficiency elaborates and energy passports) – and bringing the profit to the municipality by performing these services on the market. The trust that officials have in the Energy Management Office was also demonstrated through involvement of the Office in all the phases of public-private partnerships projects. 

Through the work on energy efficiency in Vrbas, pioneered by Zečević and Vujović, 17% savings in final energy consumption were achieved from the year 2010 onwards, meaning that the municipality was saving 10 000 000 dinars annually. 

Pirot – The first public-private partnership project in heating 

The city of Pirot is one of the bright examples of using the funds from international partners for improving energy efficiency and energy management. Pirot has adopted its Energy Efficiency Programme according to the Law on Energy Efficiency. The city has also adopted a Local Action Plan for improving energy efficiency in housing sector, which carries great potential for savings. The city has also established its Energy Efficiency Fund for supporting energy efficiency project, worth 15 000 000 dinars. 

This year Pirot has entered a public-private partnership project in heating, the first of its kind in Serbia. The contract was signed with the GGE ESKO Company for replacing fuel oil boilers with biomass boilers in four schools. These boilers are used for heating school buildings as well as the accompanying objects – sports gyms, one student dorm and one kindergarten.

The obligation of the private partner is to install all equipment and contractually deliver heating energy, as well as to provide system maintenance. It is projected that 30% savings for heating energy will be achieved. What makes the savings even bigger is the fact that central heating would require costs of connecting the buildings to the network as well as the maintenance costs which are covered by the private partner through this contract. Besides, the contract doesn’t prevent implementation of additional energy efficiency measures and achieving even greater savings since the private partner doesn’t have guaranteed amount of heating energy. The contract is signed for 15 years after which all the equipment will become property of the city. 

This project has a very strong environmental and local component, coming from the fact that biomass is localy available and renewable energy resource. It offers a chance for developing supply chains and social cooperatives. It’s important to mention that this renewable energy technology is installed in education institutions which will contribute to informing and educating the youth about environment protection and renewable energy. 

Šabac – Towards energy efficiency through dialogue with citizens

 The city of Šabac is implementing the local energy policy with the vision of 2050 in mind – a year by which Šabac should become an energy independent city. The City Council has adopted its Energy Policy as a framework document last year. The City has also implemented its local Energy Efficiency Fund. 

What makes Šabac stand out among others is implementing energy efficiency in the housing sector through cooperation and dialogue with citizens. When the charging by consumption system was introduced in 2010 for heating energy in Šabac and Subotica, there was a risk of significant increase of costs for the citizens living in buildings with bad isolation.

The city officials decided to do everything they could to provide the best possible service to the citizens and lower the costs. The solution was to initiate a programme for facade renovation co-financed by the city up to 50%, with citizens covering the remaining cost. The initial analysis was conducted on four buildings a couple decades old and one relatively new building. Additional research was conducted in 2012 in the neighborhood with its own 17 mw heating plant. The research showed potential for savings up to 35% in heating energy costs through facade renovation. These measures would allow additional 30 000 square meters to be connected to the system without increasing the capacities of the plant. 

After five years of conducting this programme great results were achieved: 10 000 square meters in housing sector encompassed with facade renovation works and energy efficiency measures. 1300 satisfied families experience better comfort, lower bills and higher price of their real estates. The requests of citizens to participate in the programme already surpass the capacities of the Fund. In order to avoid discrimination, owners of individual objects and houses are also eligible for entering this program, with one condition – to give up using fossil fuels for heating.