Energy saving measures

Climate change is one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats for the planet. Since October 2008 Cēsis has been participating in the project INTENSE (From Estonia till Croatia: Intelligent Energy Saving Measures for Municipal housing in Central and Eastern European Countries), financed by Intelligent Energy. INTENSE has been set up among 28 partners in 12 countries. In total 36 month are scheduled for the implementation of the project.

The main goal of the improvement of energy efficiency in municipal buildings is to save up the costs for heating and decrease the carbon emission impact.

After the preparatory steps and the first very successful seminar on energy efficient settlement planning, the project entered the most important phase: the partner municipalities will need to be creative and develop their own ideas and mini projects dealing with energy efficient settlement planning. To prepare project partners for this task, BEF Germany, in cooperation with Auraplan and REC Croatia and REC Slovakia, organized two study tours in Germany. Three participants from Cēsis had a chance to get acquainted with good examples in Hannover Region, in Münster, Frankfurt am Main and Freiburg. The study tour was to increase capacity and competence of municipal officers and other stakeholders regarding the information, strategic planning and implementation of energy saving measures in the municipal housing.

As for the energy saving in old municipality buildings, Cēsis has applied in the project competition "Increasing energy efficiency in municipalities' buildings", which will get the financing from transactions in "International emission trading." The city is planning to improve energy efficiency in five buildings. The energy audits, technical drawings have been made for the project implementation. The last condition is defined by the contracts with the Netherlands and Austria according to Kyoto protocol selling prescribed amount units and using the assets for financing the projects according to the climate change financing instrument. Implementation of the projects in the period of crisis creates economic stimulus programmes promoting local business in the city.