Hosted by the Tunisian National Agency for Energy Conservation (ANME), the meetMED training on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources in Buildings has been organized by ANME, the Greek Centre for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving (CRES) ,in cooperation with the Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE), as part of the meetMED activities.

The training will rely on training packages jointly designed by ANME, the Portuguese Energy Agency (ADENE), the Jordanian National Energy and Research Centre (NERC), the French National Agency for Environment and Energy Management (ADEME), CRES and the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA).

The training packages have been developed by building on sustainable energy toolkit previously designed in the framework of other projects, such as: MED – ENEC “Energy Efficiency in the Construction Sector in the Mediterranean” , IMPULSE “Integrated Management Support for Energy Efficiency in Mediterranean Public Buildings” , SHERPA “Shared knowledge for Energy renovation in buildings by Public Administrations” , CA-EPBD “Concerted Action Energy Performance of Buildings Directive”, SwitchMed , the Global Alliance for Building and Construction, as well as other bilateral trainings and capacity building technical assistance programs.

The event will take place on 24-28 February 2020 in Tunis, Tunisia. Its goal is to provide information about the implementation of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in the building sector in a context of improved multi-level governance and adaptation of EU legislation to local context in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries.

Target participants are public authorities and the private sector in charge of and/or interested in increasing the implementation of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in the local building sector.

On 4 and 5 December 2019, 20 experts from Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Portugal and Tunisia gathered at the Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona, Spain for the first meeting of the UfM Working Group (WG) on Energy Efficiency for Appliances.

The meetMED national experts presented their national experiences and engaged in topical discussion with experts from SE4All, UNEP, UNIDO C2E2, as well as from the ONG CLASP Europe and the private sector representatives from APPLiA and FRESH Egypt.

The discussion built on meetMED country questionnaires on EE in appliances and on the key meetMED reports on quality infrastructure, consumption of household appliances and regional labelling program, which will be published on the meetMED website in the upcoming months.  
The participants confirmed their interest to convene again the WG and indicated the need for a road map towards a common approach to standards and labels for appliances in the Mediterranean region in view of the UfM Ministerial meeting in 2021.

The work of the WG will be presented at the next meeting of the UfM REEE platform in January 2020.

The Mediterranean High-Level Policy Dialogue (MED-HLPD) is the sustainable energy platform that brings together high-level representatives from international financing institutions, banks, private sector, international and regional organizations and governments. The dialogue sheds the light on the need for regional cooperation between the above-mentioned stakeholders in the Northern African and the Middle Eastern countries to facilitate sustainable investments in the Renewable Energy (RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) sectors in the region.

National energy efficiency action plans (NEEAP) and renewable energy action plans (NREAP) as well as published first nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the UNFCCC Paris agreement show a large potential for RE and EE investments in the MED region. Eight countries who specified the cost of measures within their NDCs announced the need for about 150 Billion USD for implementation until 2050. However, climate finance supported the MED region with only about 13 Billion USD during the period 2003-2017.

The MED-HLPD will take place on 11-12 February 2020 in Brussels, Belgium with the aim to scale-up investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation projects of 8 participating States.

On Wednesday, 4 December 2019, ENEA hosted in Rome the meetMED workshop “INVESTMENT CLIMATE FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SELECTED MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES” in the presence of high level representatives of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, experts from the Mediterranean Association of National Agencies for Energy Management (MEDENER) and the Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE), as well as other energy stakeholders involved in the meetMED activities.

The workshop presented preliminary country reports developed by ENEA on investment climate for energy efficiency and renewable energy in two strategic countries of the region, Algeria and Palestine. A roundtable was also held among experts to highlight the state-of-the- art among the other meetMED partner countries. The event was attended by stakeholders of the public and private sector, financing institutions and banks, experts and researchers, regional and international organizations as well as of the civil society.

The discussion underlined the need for further dialogue and a greater awareness of the opportunities arising from investments in energy efficiency and renewable energies, also in terms of job creation, as an effective tool to address social issues from a forward-looking perspective. A round table discussion took place among major stakeholders of the Mediterranean Energy Associations, RCREEE, MEDENER, APRUE, PEC, NREA, ALMEE, LCEC. This highlighted the current barriers faced by domestic and foreign direct investors in energy efficiency and/or in renewable energy and revealed possible solutions to overcome legislative and institutional gaps that were identified at national level

Meeting in the framework of the UfM REEE Platform Working Group on Energy Efficiency (EE) in Appliances (with a special focus on air-conditioning)

Organised under the auspices of the Union for the Mediterranean, this meetMED workshop on Energy Efficiency in Appliances will take place on 04-05 December 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. The event will gather national experts, who are members of the UfM REEE Platform Working Group on energy efficiency (EE) in appliances – established in January 2019 (at the annual meeting of the UfM Energy platforms) – and the meetMED taskforce on EE in appliances.

The sessions will have a specific focus on regulatory and institutional aspects; monitoring and evaluation processes and structures; energy efficient air-conditioning systems; possible replacement and appliances’ scrapping systems; barriers to trade and investments in energy efficient appliances. The meetMED report on the “Assessment of electricity consumption of household appliances in the Mediterranean region” will also be presented, as well as a report on the “Current quality infrastructures in the Mediterranean region”.

Policy and regulatory risks and barriers for the financing of Energy Efficiency (EE) and Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are affecting the investment climate in most of the Mediterranean countries. In order to examine the root causes of this phenomenon, ENEA has led the meetMED activity tasked to investigate and gather updated information on the national economy of Algeria and Palestine, as two representative meetMED target countries. In particular, the research focused on the investment climate in the energy sector, the energy market structure, successful business models and the legislative framework for EE and RES investments.
The collected data have been gathered in two different meetMED Investment Country Reports, aimed at giving a brief and up-to-date picture of the EE and RES markets in Algeria and Palestine.
The workshop presents preliminary meetMED reports on Algeria and Palestine in the presence of the representatives of the public and private sector, financing institutions and banks, experts and researchers, regional and international organizations as well as of the civil society. On the one side, the event will be an opportunity to highlight the current barriers faced by domestic and foreign companies, which want to invest in energy efficiency and/or in renewable energy in these two countries; on the other side, possible solutions to overcome legislative and institutional gaps will be identified.

Organized by the Italian Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), the meetMED Workshop on the Investment Climate for EE and RE in Selected Mediterranean Countries will take place on 04 December 2019 in Rome, Italy. This workshop is back-to-back with the “Rome MED 2019 Mediterranean Dialogues”, organized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) on 5-7 December 2019.

Industries and enterprises working on EE and RES in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Countries (SEMCs) are growing but currently not structured. Local markets are quite competitive and currently no policies are implemented to support and promote their development neither their synergies. Since they face competition from outside the region and they look for neighboring markets to be adapted to their specificities, structuring EE and RES enterprises in the SEMCs could facilitate the creation of synergies and partnerships that will promote EE and RES in the region.

This sub-regional workshop aims at  presenting to the Algerian industries’ representatives and key stakeholders from the Maghreb countries the benefits of the creation of an industrial association for EE and RE at national and regional scale. The main findings of a study conducted on the EE and RE markets in the Maghreb and Mashreq regions will be shared with the participants, who will also have the chance to exchange their experiences relative to similar associations in the region. Finally, participants will explore possible modalities for supporting the creation of industrial associations that will serve, then, as a basis for the creation of a well-structured industrial association.

Co-organized by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) in collaboration with the Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE) and the Algerian Agency for Energy Management (APRUE), the Workshop “Mobilizing the Private Sector for the Energy Transition in Algeria and in the Mediterranean Region” will take place on 21 November 2019 in Algiers, Algeria at the presence of relevant stakeholders of the RE and EE sectors in the SEMCs.

The event is by invitation only.

Last week, the meetMED project was invited to participate in the Clima-MED Workshop on the Action Plans for Access to Sustainable Energy and for Climate (PAAEDCs) held at the Centre of Training and Decentralisation Support (CFAD) in Tunis, Tunisia. The workshop was an occasion for meetMED and Clima-Med to explore the synergies between the two projects and identify areas of mutual interest for future closer cooperation.

Our Communication officer, Ms Alice Giallombardo, presented the meetMED Project at the presence of the representatives of the EU Delegation in Tunisia, the Tunisian Ministries for Local Affairs, Environment, and International cooperation, some NGOs, such as the WWF Tunisia and Tunisie Ecologie, and the representatives of around 20 Tunisian municipalities.

Despite their different scopes of action – meetMED targeting mostly the national agencies and ministries and Clima-Med focusing mostly on the local level –  the two projects share numerous goals, namely supporting sustainable climate and energy policies and strategies, identifying concrete pilot actions to be implemented by national and local authorities and facilitating climate investments and the setup of finance mechanisms at national and local levels.

When presenting meetMED activities taking place in Tunisia in the biennium 2109-2020, the audience at the Workshop showed a particular interest for the meetMED training courses, whose training packages are meant to be replicable across the SEMCs at different levels. Further collaboration between the two projects has been assessed as mutually beneficial and is envisaged soon.