The second Technical Workshop was oriented on Financial Instruments and was organized in Magdeburg on 4th and 5th of December 2018, hosted by Development Bank of Saxony-Anhalt.
With decreasing budgets and dwindling funding sources on regional, national, and EU level, the use of innovative financial instruments becomes more important every day. This is one of the reasons why it is so crucial to use the European exchange of experience to look beyond our own horizons and to learn from each other.
In this context, the EMPOWER Technical Workshop gave partners a chance to cooperate in creating innovative financial instruments while benefitting from expert opinions from all the partner regions.
The workshop kicked off with an overview over the European framework for financial instruments, presented by the managing authority for ERDF and ESF in Saxony-Anhalt. Next, the partners got to know several existing financing models which are already being applied today. Experts from Sweden, France, Spain, and Germany presented detailed insights into concrete examples for uses of Green Impact Bonds, the European Regional Development Fund, European Structural and Investment Funds, Crowdfunding and Energy Performance Contracting. Last but not least, there were two presentations from “a banker’s perspective” which elaborated on banking criteria for funding energy efficiency projects.
Building on these experts’ presentations, all partners then assessed their financial needs and matched them with existing approaches as a basis for developing their own financing concepts. Taking into account their own regional context, this provided all partners with a solid starting point for creating an innovative financial instrument in all EMPOWER regions.
Copyright for photos: © Investitionsbank Sachsen-Anhalt
