The South-West Oltenia Regional Developing Agency (SWO RDA), as Partner in the SMEPlus project, organised on the 29th of January 2020, in Craiova, the first stakeholder meeting focusing on the regional policy instruments for energy efficiency in industrial SMEs from South-West Oltenia Region.
According to the agenda, the SWO RDA implementation team presented the objectives, activities, expected outcomes and implementation stage of the project, with focus on the regional policy instrument, in this case represented by the Priority Investment 2.1A within the Regional Operational Programme 2014-2020.
Three good practices, identified and implemented by the Lead Partner, University of Gävle, in the field of energy efficiency of SMEs were introduced to the stakeholders, respectively: Software for industrial energy auditing; Energy efficiency networks ENERGIG; and Database for energy efficiency measures. All three tools were part of a pilot program initiated by the University of Gävle, targeting the improvement of energy efficiency in industrial SMEs from the Gävleborg region.
During the interactive partn of the meeting, business environment and regional public authority representatives debated the needs and proposal of improvement measures for the regional policy instrument that addresses the SMEs in SWO Region. In the debating session the stakeholders were showing a lot of interest in the Swedish good practices, and they’ve asked questions about how the program was implemented, expected results and from which type of financing sources it was funded.
After an intensive Q&A session, regional stakeholders expressed their interest to be directly involved in the project activities. Further activities in the project will focus on the ways that the partners can improve their regional policy instruments. The interregional exchange of experience and know-how will help partners to offer better support for adopting measures and will allow to capitalize the potential of the energy efficiency programmes that apply to industrial SMEs.
