CoM-Grant Steering Committee Meeting and Internal Project Meeting on 17.06.2015 in Vinnytsa

On 17 June 2015, the last Steering Committee Meeting and an internal Project Meeting of all partners and participants of the ”Covenant of Mayors Capacity Building Model for Ukraine and Georgia: Model Solution for Eastern Partnership and Central Asian Countries” project met in Vinnytsia to discuss the main achievements, lessons learnt and results of the project. Both meetings took place in the framework of the European Sustainable Energy Week and the annual conference of the Association “Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine” – this year held under the motto: "With the Covenant of Mayors towards energy independence – Challenge accepted!"
The Steering Committee Meeting was dedicated to a presentation of all project outputs and evaluation of its results. After a brief introduction, Project Manager Agnieszka Schirru-Nowicka quickly led over to a review of the different working fields of the project, among others, implementation of pilot energy efficiency/ renewable energy projects in all project cities, trainings for Ukrainian and Georgian energy managers and consultants, guidelines and software tools, awareness-raising campaigns and capacity development of the involved project partners. All representatives of the project cities and consultants were lively involved in an intense discussion on the topics mentioned. They were supported by Vitaliy Volkov, Deputy Project Manager, and Kilian Schubert, Communication Expert.
Very valuable input was given by Anatoliy Kopets, Key Expert of the Covenant of Mayors Demonstration Projects, who initiated a more general debate on how the achievements of the project can be transformed into further steps. Two short presentations on the Development Agency “Sinergija”’s important input to the project were given by its representative Matej Čerpnjak, both on general capacity building and the agency’s successful work in Kamianets-Podilskyi, were the city’s Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) has been switched into a practical investment plan.
During the second part of the day, an Internal Project Meeting took place, during which several technical topics such as details connected with the preparation of the final descriptive and financial report and lessons learnt were discussed.
The high level of the discussion once more showed that the past years of the project have indeed allowed all parts involved to move ahead with their competences in the energy efficiency field, as well as improve their technical knowledge and project management skills.
In the end, the nice atmosphere in which the meeting took place culminated with the official award of certificates for all project participants.