News
CATEGORY: Energy, Investments, Markets, Strategy & Policy, Transmission & Distribution Networks, Power Generation, CHP, District Heating, Renewable Energy Sources, Rational Use of Energy, Socioeconomic development, Economic Development
LOCATION: NIS Countries
START/END: 2012 - 2016
CONSULTANCY BUDGET: 19,576,230
CLIENT: European Commission Directorate General for Development and Cooperation - EuropeAid
ORIGIN OF FUNDING: Directorate General for Development and Cooperation - EuropeAid
PARTNERS: Ramboll Danmark A/S (DK) (Lead Partner); EIR Global (BE); MVV decon GmbH (DE); The British Standards Institution (UK); ICF Consulting Limited (UK); Statistics Denmark (DK); Energy Institute Hrvoje Pozar (HR)
STAFF PROVIDED: 25
Type of Services
Component B: Electricity and Gas sectors
- Provision of policy advice on EU best practices and advice on primary and secondary legislation in the Electricity & Gas sectors.
- Policy advice on harmonisation of electricity and gas standards and codes, including the definition of a strategy for harmonisation; drafting of a road map on the harmonisation process with action plans for each country, and provision of support in their implementation; and the provision of capacity building programmes to the national standardisation bodies in this field; the creation and support to institutional structures in the fields of electricity and gas and awareness raising to industry and national authorities of the benefits of harmonisation.
- Provision of support for the improvement of energy cross border trade and cooperation, including an analysis of the legal framework for cross-border trade, promotion of cooperation between partner countries, facilitation of communication between stakeholders and capacity building for the Transmission System Operators in this respect.
- Provision of support for sustainable and efficient energy transit infrastructures, including analysis of gas losses on main gas transit lines; prioritising of interventions concerning gas losses and planning of emergency actions; analysis of costs and benefits of different surveillance techniques; identification of and intervention in priority emergency areas; introduction of state-of-the-art infrastructure, management and surveillance systems; introduction of the European methodologies and methane Leakage Detection And Repair systems (LDAR), improvement of electricity utility management, metering, billing and losses reduction plans; and facilitate access to modern experience in these fields.
- Provision of support to the monitoring of the Status Report (Baku Initiative Monitoring Framework).
Component C: Sustainable Energy
- Support to primary and secondary legislation enabling a favourable investment climate for RE and EE, including on pricing policies and targeted subsidies
- Organisation of fact-finding missions
- Preparation of baseline survey and update of country institutional and regulatory frameworks
- Development and operation of Ad-Hoc Expert Facility (AHEF)
Indicative projects implemented are:
- Capacity building of the personnel of energy service companies (ESCO) in Armenia
- Assistance in setting up an operational framework for Energy Service Companies (ESCO) in Moldova
- Energy Policy Talks “Measures to enhance energy efficiency among Vulnerable Consumers” in Kiev
- Workshop: Conducting of the capacity building on EU RES & EE Directives and legally binding obligations under the Energy Community Treaty in Georgia
- Organization and conducting of the International Forum “Investments in Renewable Energy for Sustainable Energy Development” in Belarus
- Workshop on Capacity building for financing of EE / RES projects in Armenia and Georgia
- Promotion of investment into the sustainable energy sector in terms of connection to the grid in Belarus
- Regulation and monitoring of investment activities of regulated companies in Moldova
- Improvement of legislative framework of RES in Azerbaijan
- Improvement of the current legislation aimed at RES promotion in heat and electricity generation
- Improving university curricula in the areas of a) energy efficiency in the sectors of energy, industry and buildings, and b) renewable energy sources in Armenia
- Assistance to the Ministry of Economy for the transposition of Directives 2009/72/EC & 2009/73/EC into the national legislation in Moldova
- Development of a road-map for introduction of an energy performance certificates system in the building sector of Armenia, including legal framework and distribution of institutional roles
- Development of the institutional framework for sustainable energy
- Preparation of a training needs assessment in order to develop a detailed capacity building plan
- Development of a capacity building plan
- Support to investment attraction
Component D: Support to statistical cooperation
- Participation in the assessment of the institutional situation and identification of partners and their needs.
Description
The overall objective of the project is to contribute to the progress of the INOGATE Partner Countries in the achievement of the Baku Initiative and the Eastern Partnership objectives. The programme would support a reduction in their dependency on fossil fuels and imports, improvement of the security of their energy supply, and climate change overall mitigation. The INOGATE Programme (which derives its name from Interstate Oil and Gas Transportation to Europe) supports international cooperation between the European Union, the littoral states of the Black & Caspian Seas and their neighbouring countries.
The project will ensure that assistance in support of the Baku Initiative/Eastern Partnership as well as the Energy Community objectives is more effective, coherent, sustainable and aligned with partner countries' objectives and will assist the beneficiary countries strengthen their energy institutional governance in relation to sustainable energy, in particular by focussing on institutional capacity. At the same time, assistance will be provided for the improvement of the business climate for energy efficiency and renewable energy investments and improvement of energy economic planning through enhanced use and harmonisation of energy statistics in line with European standards. Finally, the project aims to enhance convergence of Gas and Electricity Markets on the basis of EU internal energy market principles, and to increase efficiency of the gas and electricity supply infrastructures.
To achieve this, the project is being executed as four concurrent components, each addressing a technical, policy or capacity-building issue:
Component A: Coordination and Communication of the INOGATE Programme
Component B: Electricity and Gas sectors
Component C: Sustainable Energy
Component D: Support to statistical cooperation
Component A deals with the operation of the INOGATE Technical Secretariat in Kiev and Tbilisi, all issues of coordinating the implementation of the project with the partner countries and in communicating the project and its results with the stakeholders. Component A also deals with the horizontal issues of investments and improving the business climate in the partner countries. Another office was established in Central Asia (Uzbekistan), which operated during the first two years of the project.
Components B, C, and D will work on a two-pronged approach.
- The Ad-Hoc Expert Facility (AHEF) which is an on-demand technical assistance provision on the request of the beneficiaries of the partner countries. The issues that can be addressed under AHEF involve legislative, regulatory, technical, managerial and awareness raising.
- Capacity building involves a wide range of capacity building programme including training, seminar, workshops, peer reviews and study tours.
The project covers the wide range of areas from legislation, regulations, technical issues, management, consumer protection and international cooperation aspects of the gas and electricity, renewable and energy efficiency sub-sectors. Therefore the beneficiaries and stakeholders for the project include the following:
- Ministries of Energy, of Natural Resources, of Industry and New Technologies
- Transmission systems operators (TSO) for electricity and gas
- National regulators
- Ministry in charge of Finance
- National and Regional Standardization Bodies
- National Statistical Institutes (NSI) in each Partner Country
- Energy Agencies, Energy Services Companies, Audit Centers
- National Construction Authorities – a new important stakeholder for national design and construction codes of practice harmonization
- National Agency dealing with consumer protection
- Civil Society organizations for consumer protection
- Design engineering companies
- National Associations and Unions for gas and electricity
- Research and development institutes
- Any other relevant entity dealing with policy making or implementation in relation to the Energy sector
