In the region of Western Macedonia, Greece, the Action Plan of FINERPOL project aims to influence an approved action of the thematic objective axis No4 of the Regional Operation Program (ROP) 2014-2020 entitled: Support for the transition towards a Low-Carbon economy for all sector.

The action that is going to be influenced is the “Development or upgrade of district heating networks” and involves an amount of 6 M€. The good practices of FINERPOL (FINERMAP tool) and the achieved interregional exchange of experiences will affect the anticipated call of this action in two ways:

  1.  The call will support Pilot District heating projects “with the utilization of biomass and similar sources of energy for the use of Renewable Energy Technology in Public Buildings of small Municipalities of Western Macedonia”
  2. The call will require from the pilot district heating projects to be accompanied with the preliminary steps for the establishment of innovative Public – Private Partnerships (PPPs) between Municipalities and ESCOs that involve investments on energy efficiency and RES coming from loans and/or private funds for the extension of the District Heating Projects in larger scale.

The activities for the implementation of the Action Plan include among others:

  • A technical support contract between TEIWM and a municipality of the region, acting as a pilot for other municipalities in order to apply successfully to the relevant call of ROPWM for district heating networks
  • A contract between TEIWM and a global scale business advisor for the set-up of the Financial Instrument (FI) for the specific municipality
  • A meeting-workshop between the municipality, the MA-ROPWM, the business advisor and ESCOS or private investors, as a part of the ex-ante assessment of the new FI.

The first two activities have been completed on 15th of June and 5th of December 2018 respectively. Both contracts are being implemented now, while a pre-workshop took place on the 29th of November 2018, in Deskati, Grevena, in order to gain publicity/disseminate the project. The workshop was very successful. Almost 50 participants attended, that participated actively in a discussion.