 I would like to start. I think that you're already welcome on today's event. Last from the series of events this year that will be on the topic of energy, democracy and energy. I will start with official things. The official language is Macedonian but will have simultaneous translation on both English and Macedonian for those people that don't understand one of those languages. Where you have interpretation on the screen, you can choose which language you'd like to follow the event on. This is the technical part. The event will be recorded. So if you have any questions, there's technical support and you can send them a message. In this project, transformation to energy and democracy. Transparency and transformation from Brazil is the part of the students who are here with a lot of our friends and dear guests from different parts of the world and European Union to talk about the new directives that the energy goes. We'll talk both for pre-pandemic and pandemic and what happens right now. We'll see the trends in Europe and see trends on the future possibilities, how we can go on. You'll have a lot of things that you can look into. We have also one publication that will be in Macedonia and I'd like to thank the Green Economy Foundation, European Foundation that also did this publication. We'll answer the question how to make a great world and how to use all the resources. We'll answer the question how to go from extractive to energy that will go on in the future. It's obvious with the climate change that are more obvious each day and other problems we have in the world economies. We must have drastic changes with the world and the earth and its resources, not just now but also for the future generations. We must use the resources equally and well. Firstly from socio-economical reasons we mustn't have any inequality and a bigger whole from those who do not use the resources and those who use them in everyday life. Historically this always existed but in the future we must find a systematic change that will go on and will exist and will get us social justice. On today's event I'd like to say who are our guests. Firstly is the president of Gav Green European Foundation, he is also the president of OECS Think Tank and he is the author of the publication. The original battle is the introduction of citizen's energy, making energy democracy happen publication. Then we have Maya Morachanin, the Green MP from the Macedonian Parliament. She'll talk about her thoughts on this topic. Next we have our professor Jaroski, we thank him for being here. He is a professor of human geography at the University of Manchester where he leads the program of human geography and he'll talk about energetic poverty in Eastern Europe. We have Melanie Frohlin, she'll talk about polarization or how to have clean energy transition and at the end we have Edwin Regified, he follows our work for years. He works closely with us and works on the energy part of in the country for years and he'll talk about the virginities and talent is in renewables in the region. I'll try to be short. I'd like to present their phones, the co-president of Jeff and president of OECS Think Tank. He'll lead us in the topic and he'll talk more about the publication right now. Okay, many thanks. It's a pleasure of being with you again. I also want to repeat again, it's said we are meeting by screens and not coming months and then we can be together again. Next year. I think from the Green European Foundation, I can say we are very proud and how the work you're doing in North Macedonia, which is not always, let's say, an easy context to work in but you really are taking on board the very progressive ideas and working towards a sustainable society. So this is really a really good job you're doing concerning the topic of today. I think it's a kind of a good timing you have. We are just after five years after the Paris climate agreement was signed. It's clear that we all have to increase our ambitions in order to keep climate heating below the threshold of the 1.5 degrees. This requires a transition of all systems that keeps our society running mobility system food system but also the energy system. And I think this is key from an ecological perspective. We just we don't need a transition. We need a just transition. This means we take care we don't leave anybody behind, or to put it in a more positive perspective. I'm sure that everybody can participate and everybody can benefit from the transition. So it is not only about less emissions, which of course are important crucial, but it is also at the same time about abolishing energy poverty. It's about creating green jobs. It's also about a participative democracy. People really feel part of the change. And if we translate this to the domain of energy. In the paper you can read that we have defined this as the transition towards a new regime of renewable energy democracy, which is based on four principles. And I think all progressive parties in society would agree on this. It's 100% renewable energy with sun, wind and water considered as commons. Nobody owns the wind. We have to use it as a commons together. The second out of four principles of this new regime of renewable energy democracy is ecological justice. Everybody has access to energy, although and this can sound maybe a bit strange. Everybody has access to energy although energy prices are high. Why do I say this. Energy also renewable energy has a price you have to install windmills you have to install solar panels. This also needs materials. So we really have to be very careful about the amount of energy we need so it's not the good thing is not to give people money so they can pay their energy bills although their houses are almost not insulated. The third thing is to make sure all houses are insulated so nobody has a big energy bill. I think this is the purpose and therefore, which is in a way connected to a carbon tax. We are not talking about making energy very cheap. It has to be accessible for everybody. That's the point, and we should make sure that through our provisioning systems like housing. Nobody needs a lot of energy. One of the people of this new regime is democracy. We have to strive for what I call a public civil management of energy production and distribution. In the last two, three decades in the European Union after the liberalization of the energy market in the 1990s. At that time, the illusion was that big energy corporations would take over and invest heavily in the development of renewables. And also the illusion was or the promise was that energy invoices people have to pay would go down. The big thing is that also in Belgium, we have never paid more for our energy as consumers, and big corporations have barely invested in renewable energy. So therefore, it is the government together with citizens, they have to take into their own hands this transition. Energy within limits, decreasing the energy demands. It is always the first rule. If you talk about energy, the kilowatt or the what you don't need you don't use. That's the best one. So enabling a system where we can have a good life with energy within planetary boundaries within limits is the way we have to go. So in other words, we are talking about an energy system that runs on renewable energy is core management is core managed from the standpoint of ecological justice, and is focused on the general interest. Now, the good news is and you will talk more about it later during this event that next to public authorities and also the last year's corporations. Citizens are organizing themselves in so called energy cooperatives or rescopes, and they're doing it in a lot of countries, and they have also organized themselves at the European level. And there are also very heavy influential on the European level. And really were able to, yeah, have influence on the latest energy European energy package. So my hope is for this evening that this this event and this publication can inspire people in North Macedonia. This is already happening, but it can inspire even more to establish rescopes, but also to think about and install legal frameworks at the national level and the municipal level in order to support the citizens energy communities. And in this way and that's I think is a good news of the latest European energy legislation that citizens energy communities are now part of the really legal framework is the first time I think it's really also the first domain if you look at European policy, that the role of citizens is directly put into legislation and I think this is really a very good. I would say, move change. And of course, if you don't connect this with the European Green Deal. I think it's really I would say, although you can criticize Green Deal, if you compare it with the policies of the former European Commission on the younger. This Green Deal is really a change of direction, a change of course and as you know, also, the principle of just transition is part of this Green Deal. And there will be still a lot of debate on the implementation but I think that's normal transition. You can also and with this I will end my introduction. Another word for transition is not only change, but it's also disturbance. It's a distortion of the current system. So people who now are benefiting from the old system are in power, of course they don't like it. So it's also it's also a struggle. And there will be resistance, but I'm sure that if you work together. And I would say from Brussels to Skopje, we can manage to really make this transition a reality. From the Green European Foundation, I wish you all the best with this event. Sadly, after apologize, I already had engaged me for another webinar which starts in 30 minutes, which was already planned earlier. So, wish you all the best and let's see each other next year together with a good Belgian beer. Thank you. Thank you, Dirk. Thank you, Dirk. I would like to thank the Green European Foundation and GEP for the perfect translation in Macedonian that you did. And the publication is already shared in PDF. You can find it in the chat. You can share the link you can download it and read it. It's a very simple and well interpreted Macedonian translation. You can share it with all who you feel are interested. I would like to address and I would like to invite the Member of Parliament who follows our events, my Muratinin with a short view on this event. Thank you, Alexander. I'm very pleased that tonight I'm also a part of the events of Sunrise with the support of the Green European Foundation. I hope that soon we can return to organizing events in person. We have some good news in the context of the availability of the vaccines and I really hope that next year we can overcome this pandemic and the crisis we are living in and we can communicate in person and share experiences and ideas. Great news, big crisis is reaching its end and what's the bad news is unfortunately globally there's a great challenge that remains the climate change and that is something we demand from us to focus. And like with the corona crisis all the states and all the institutions are focusing on cooperation. That's what I feel is the only way how we can deal with the climate crisis as well with cooperation and taking all the necessary measures to deal with the climate change and the climate crisis. What I feel is crucial in dealing with climate change is, although it's a wide topic in the context of this event, I would like to address two key moments, the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. And yes, I agree with Dirk that we need to talk about just transition, not just transition, it needs to be just because that's the only way how efficiently we can make a transition from measured to the needs of the citizens and having in mind that the most vulnerable groups of citizens from social aspect especially are most affected by the climate change and the climate crisis. So when we talk about transition, we always talk about just transition to renewables and maybe even widely in wider context transition and changing the economic model from the current linear to greener circular economy. And I would agree with Dirk that that's the road that forces a lot of obstacles because every change is met with resistance, change doesn't happen fast or easily but together we can contribute and practically make these changes happen. And of course the second aspect is the energy efficiency because these two elements energy transition and to renewables and energy efficiency are going hand in hand, they are part of one idea. The transition to renewables, I want to inform you shortly that in the past three years in North Macedonia was made a big step in the legal framework and I'm talking about like an MP now with the new low on energy, we opened the gate for the bigger use of renewables and especially the use of solar energy is that the energy efficiency law was implemented and so we have the legal background for implementation but what remains as a big challenge, the challenge remains in the sub directives that enable the little companies and citizens to take part in the use of solar energy and to be motivated to see it as a cost effective way to set up affordable types and take part in the market of in the energy market, although it's allowed it's not motivating the limitations that exist are demotivating citizens and small companies to set up affordable types and to use solar energy. I agree that in all this process key are the benefits from the solar energy use to be on the side of citizens because that way this way currently the big businesses have the benefit. That's what we want as the Greens is for every citizen to have the benefits from the renewables, the solar energy and I feel that seeing the change of regulations we should work on that in the next period and I think that more on this topic, colleague will speak more but as a member of parliament I would like to contribute with my insight into the change of regulations and that it's one of the key moments to make solar energy use more available for the citizens because that's key to the just transition that we're talking about. I will stop here because we have great speakers and I feel that we will have more interesting discussion in front of us because this is a very important topic and citizens are interested on this topic as well so thank you for joining us all. Thank you Maya, well said. Shortly you said everything that happened to us this previous years and the aspect that we're all talking about today and follow in this part of the economy and energy and in the future as well now. I would like to be sure as well and to say welcome to our next speaker who will talk in Macedonian. That's the professor Stefan Puzharowski who is a professor of human geography at the University of Manchester, where he also leads the program for people and energy. He is the University of Manchester as well if I translated it right professor and he is also a member of the bar for human energy and he leads the biggest network of experts for for energy poverty. That's who will lead these policies. Let's be short with all the things that the professor already has done in more than 120 pages. I have a lot of projects about renewables. Professor, thank you for your presence to for is yours. Thank you, I hope you're hearing me well. Great. Great honor for me to be invited here and thank you for the great presentation and really glad to be able to talk about these topics in Macedonia. I'm very glad that I was invited by a train and European colleagues whom I have collaborated with in the past and also get which I know them for a lot of time I come from the North Macedonia from here. Now I'm also here physically, but also up until my university I studied here from a social aspect I worked at human geography, it's kind of a sociology, urban sociology. I've worked that for a long time and I don't know if we have enough time but later I can show you what I've worked upon in Macedonia on this topic. My presentation is pretty much general it's in this context that we're talking about today. The question of energy poverty and how other countries in Europe treated what are their policies if we have enough time I'll show our results from our country because a few years ago, up until a few years ago we had a big project financed by European Union. About energy poverty in Skopje in some municipalities we had a lot of reports and talked about numbers of people we also had a few workshops so if we have time we'll talk about that as well just a second I'll share my presentation. As you can see it. Actually, my presentation is in English. But thank you for the flexibility to talk in Macedonian. It's more logical for me. I'll talk parallel but the presentation is in English. This is a presentation for the energy board in southeastern Europe in the context of generally speaking the just energy and globally I'll talk about the causes of this problem and how do we measure this. What are the specific problems and including Europe and North Macedonia as well. And then I'll talk about NACP up until July because up until a month ago I was a president director of the energy board observatory of European Union that works under European Commission so we work directly on analysis of those plans so I'll show some of the analysis and also which are the future challenges in the region and southeastern Europe. The observatory. You can find those sites. We're in a process. Conserves him from one to another. You can find these things we have some indicators that are for all European countries. Not all of them are here from the western. But if you will search the site you can find them. The first indicator is the non available non available to hit the home to create. The other thing is one you have various utility bills, including energy. Again, here on the first lens are the parts from southeastern which are which have the highest port levels I'm sure that some of you know the reasons why it's not something hard to know it's prices are reaching and going upwards. There's a reason why under socialism there was help from the country. It's a long story, but the prices are going upward, especially of electricity but they're also incoming. And it's a big reason why, but also they have low energy balance and especially what they're building in the rural areas with low standard. And last, last ring I'd say the heat and light is very expensive. There are high rates of general working. I will explain why is there for the of income and the energy board is not really the same. Also the capacity of social support mechanisms in this country are not enough to cover the energy for the houses and continually working in this region since 2000s. It's from this entry and I've also worked on this topic and I'd say that since then it was clearly to see that the problem of energy board is bigger than the income board. About two thirds of the households in North Macedonia have problems with energy board. I'll explain why the other problem is the limited infrastructural development. I think that there aren't systems for heating or gas in some countries. I wouldn't like to support the gas since it's a since we have the bad problems from it as well but it's hard for the households to heat or to call their houses, which represents the newer countries rather than the European countries, which usually have good infrastructure and the transition leads base for problems. I think it's a bad idea to put money into gas and the other problem is the inadequate political and public recognition. This is sometimes somehow changing but in some parts we are still not on the level that we need to be at. The energy board can be seen, it's very visible. This is in Bulgaria, but when you see trees and logs and when you can smell from houses when they heat, it's a direct product from the heating problems and we cannot change this overnight since the energy board is a problem that happens so many years. So, if whether we want or we don't want to accept that when we eat logs and trees, we trigger pollution. I would like to talk about a lot of things that need to be explained. When we are talking about poverty, it's always a question of our definition into society, which is socially and politically dependent on the context. It's very easily defined and we cannot put it in a frame. It always includes participation of the society. When we define poverty, it's different from the official definitions of poverty in other countries. I would say that it's very close to the definition of the one in France. Maybe if we can talk about this more. Let's talk about the inability to secure an adequate level of energy services in the home. That's the general definition. It looks very simple, but we have a lot of things, but what does an adequate level mean, that's very subjective who says what's adequate and what's not. An adequate level has two elements. The first one is what we say the minimal material energy levels. Maybe I should have said what are the energy needs. The heat and the light, the last results that we get from the energy that's not kilowatts or the heat through the pipes, or the hot water that goes through the pipes, but the last ending result from what we have in our home, the benefits from the energy in our home. We use it so informatic economy is the thing that we use, but we have the material level that we need to survive so we can secure the health and survival. That's the minimal level. That's very well defined. If your home is under the minimal temperature. There are some parameters that are also discussed, but at least 21 Celsius degrees in winter or 18 Celsius degrees for rooms that you are sleeping kit. Let's talk for winter there are different parameters for summer. That's the general level. If you are a longer period of time under that temperature, there are effects on your respiratory system and your health. If per se that level is well secured. It's not enough. Your needs as part of the society are not fulfilled. So if you hit only one room in your home, which is very usual, do you are a part of normally including in the studies that okay, if the family does not use enough resources since it doesn't have enough money is that living in a normal society. That social, socially defined level it's a discussable. It's a question as we say for the collective talk socially not just economically and it depends on one context to another. Because it's not the same in Macedonia or in Italy or in Greece or in Great Britain or in other countries in Africa. It's very interesting how we define this but it's the level that we tend to normal to function normally. If you do not cover those levels, then you are in an energy poverty. How many households in Europe, there are at least 50 million households that are affected in the newest districts are 30 to 40 but the indicators change because they show different things. The reasons are the low residential energy and low incomes, as I've already mentioned is turning south to earn European countries are most affected. What are some of the principal vulnerabilities other than the low incomes and the energy efficient low energy efficiency we talk about age the older people. Most usually we also talk about gender. The households that are consisted of single parents. There's a term in the Macedonian language as well are more vulnerable disabilities also great vulnerability. Living in a private rented dinner that it's probably not very specifically for Macedonia since there aren't a lot of households like this. Now we've shown also that the ethnic minority background are very vulnerable to energy poverty and all of minority are very vulnerable to this and there are also other categories what I would like to mention and truly important is that the energy poverty is not the same as the income poverty. One part of those who are income poverty are also energy poor, but since we have all the other vulnerabilities we have extra households that are energy poor. Those vulnerabilities are highlighted for example in Eastern Europe since we have bigger rate of energy poverty. In a political sense for a long time I've spoken to this and it remains the same now with it's getting better. It falls in a hole between everything but historically it was a problem because it's not a problem of social welfare because sometimes we do not say energy poverty it's not being able to buy or have something it's not sometimes falls under social welfare or energy policies which is not really well set in Southern Europe. Shortly I wouldn't like to go over my time. What are the indicators that we use those that I've mentioned we have different indicators we don't have the whole picture if the only way to do that if we go to the house called to a specific household is and see what are what's happening there so we use general indicators so we see at expenditure. We see and look at what the house households say for themselves and their science for example if there is condensation or sense similar to this we are shown that something's happening there. If they're called in their house those kinds of questions are the ones that we use for a longer period of time in Macedonia. I will invite you to look at the overview and report from the observatory that we've done and we've published a few months ago I have also a published book to link is at the end so it's a great text to begin with and it runs all the countries in Europe. Shortly, I know that we do not have enough time. Maybe we can go on with the discussion and I'll show you some results about scopia what's the problems in Europe including this country I think that there are a lot of policies and formal legal documents and strategies, but not enough capacity implementation, although the policy of households it's not well done and it's very important in this sense. One thing that we can change is dissolution problem and what are other things that we can learn from these countries, what they can learn. They should do programs more precisely towards the energy efficiency problems in households where vulnerable families leave from my own experience working and researching this, the parts where there are money put in isolation. You have a huge results on the end of the month bills to the families which are also which is also better for the economy, the energy, etc. There are also a lot of positive sides and other funds from you that those countries can use. I also think that we should work more on with the ministries in these domains because they can do a lot because even in this sense we have a well built system, but how we can better it in sense of energy is a different question. I'm sorry that I went on over my time. This is the last slide that repeats some of the stuff. Unfortunately, we do not have time for this, but if we have time or for while we have the discussion, I can go back to the results of Spope and we can talk about that. I think that will be interesting for you. Thank you once more. This is my Twitter. I didn't put a book, I'll write it in chat. It's in English. It's a free book. You can all open it and per se it has general thing of the energy board in Europe. Thank you a lot. I'm sorry for going over time. Thank you Professor for the presentation. This was a different view. This event is forth on this topic. Your aspect is interesting in a sense that you speak on the topic generally about energy, not just production and the use of energy. This aspect you're presenting was very interesting and important. We can continue in the discussion. That's around 40 people present in this online conference to take it brief. In the context that all the speakers mentioned. Dirk mentioned Rescoop as a European community of energy enterprises and energy corporatives. One of them is this from Croatia. We started the cooperation last year. We continue the cooperation. I want to thank Melanie Poulon as an energy expert from this organization and I would like to invite her as representative from the Green Energy Cooperative to present some information. Thank you for the introduction. I'm very glad to join you here tonight. So I have prepared a brief presentation to share the experience that we have in Croatia with community energy projects and local initiatives that we initiated in the last years. So just please let me know if you can see the slides that I'm presenting. It should be visible now. Okay, perfect. So the topic is the community light solarization for energy transition. What does that mean so I want to share with you our experience on using solar PV as a technology that is already very well established and to boost the energy democracy process and to really bring energy in the hands of our citizens. As a small introduction, I want to tell you who we are, who is this and who are people behind the organization. We are renewable energy cooperative and social enterprise. We are now currently mostly active in Croatia, but we had a few projects in the region and we are very excited to continue working with the countries in our neighborhood. North Macedonia as well and I'm looking forward to the continuing collaboration on this field. We started with a mission to help a public sector and citizens to invest and utilize renewable energy sources. So this is the mission that we have in mind from the early beginnings. And we are building on the vision to really bring energy in the hands of citizens through their individual investments or through local energy communities and cooperatives such as ours. So where we started we started with networking with, we are part of a pretty large European networks that are active in this field. So I would like to mention some of them. First, the climate kick is one of Europe's largest public private innovation partnerships, and we are very proud to be part of this network and to gather all the knowledge that they have and really try and implement their approach in combating climate change into our projects in creation and in the region. Also RASCOP EU, Alexander just mentioned them, so this is a European Federation of Renewable Energy Cooperatives and we are very proud to be one of eight board members in the Federation. So this is a huge pool of inspiration and ideas that we are also borrowing when we are developing business models that will function in our national context in Croatia. So how we started. Well, one of the first true community energy projects happened two years ago in Croatia and our cooperative was one of the initiators. We designed and implemented two crowdfunding campaigns for two small scale solar PV plants installed public buildings in the city of Krijevci. One was for the technology center and another one for city library. This was a pretty pretty low investment cost around 30,000 euros each. But what's really interesting is that we managed to really activate and mobilize local citizens to invest and fully fund the initial capital to the initial investment. So we did that foremost with collaboration with city of Krijevci, and I want to point out here that we are really doing a lot of effort putting a lot of effort in working with local authorities in Croatia. I think this is one really important segment when we are talking about energy democracy and local projects and involvement of citizens. And what we offered for local citizens in Krijevci was 4.5 interest rate for a period of 10 years for their initial investment for their micro loan that they put forward to make this PV plants happen. This was for the first project and for the second one that followed after one year or was a 3% interest. So we managed to mobilize more than 80 citizens from local community and the whole project was funded in first case in less than 10 days and for the second project in less than two days. So this is something that we are especially proud of. This is our crew. Like, making a small photo session next to the PV plant. And the projects that are now up and running for already two years on this public buildings. What we are now especially focused are PV systems for households. So what what we are working on is developing a new business model that will really give a boost to the Croatian solar market. I mean the situation with the market development is pretty bad in Croatia. It's mostly stagnating for let's say eight or eight or ten months within a year. And then two months when there are public funds, when there are subsidies available for equipment, then the market spikes. The market wakes up and some some systems happen, but for most of the year it's really stagnating and we see it as a huge missed opportunity for Croatian citizens and for local economy. So we started in 2019 with collaboration with City of Latter-day and this is now our new demo place to really test and test the business model that we developed and to really implement 30 small scale PV systems for households in their local community. So what was really interesting is that in the midst of pandemic pandemic going on and starting to roll out, we made a small survey for Croatian households, and they showed a really huge interest to in the times of crisis, they showed their money in something that will secure benefits for them in the coming period of 20 to 30 years. In June this year we received grant from EIT Climate Kick through their extraordinary post COVID-19 regeneration call. So we really put solar and its potential to boost local community and to provide new green jobs to provide a new perspective for unemployed young people who lost their job during the crisis. We put that in the center of the solution that we were offering and it was really amazing to work on this in the following six months with our colleagues from EIT Climate Kick. They recognized us this week as one of their champions in 2020 and we are very proud of that. So what is it all about? So we recognize three main issues that we want to solve with the solar energy in the hands of citizens and this is a job loss that people suffer and this is a really low PV penetration in the energy mix in Croatia. We are among the worst countries in the EU with the utilization of the potential that we have and we saw that cities are very vulnerable to lockdowns and especially because they depend on imports in all segments. So I'm an engineer so I want to put some numbers forward here as well. So what would 1000 solar roofs mean in the Croatian context? It would be just the beginning, just a small boost to the market that is right now dead. It would mean only 15% of the goal that is set with the energy strategy of Croatia each year and it would attract initially investment of up to 8 million euros which is great and which would actually boost economy on a larger scale and it would create the potential to have up to 4000 new green jobs every year. So what are the key elements of this model? We want to build the whole ecosystem around the solar PV market. We are focusing on local partnerships. We also attracted some commercial partners like Rife Eisenbank and we will continue working on that hard in the following months and next year. So we developed the digital tool matchmaking platform which I will present really briefly in a couple of minutes. So what we're also working on is strengthening local communities. So we developed an education model for solar installers which will become ambassadors of the business model that we developed, ambassadors of community energy and energy cooperatives and we are right now in the middle of testing this new business model with the new capacity being installed in city of Varashtin. It all started at the community mobilization campaign started in September this year. So we visited 10 Croatian cities. This was a really important step for us because we really went out there and make interaction with more than 500 people in Croatian city squares to answer all the questions that they had regarding solar PV. And in October we launched the platform, Nasun Cenoistrani, or on the sunny side, which is actually one stop shop for our new customers. So this is the model that we developed is market based. And we see this as an opportunity for us as a cooperative to really come out on the market and provide an alternative to the services that are right now being offered, which are not really creating a big impact on the penetration levels or on the climate or energy goals that the Croatian government set. So what else we are, we will offer group discounts to our customers and this is an alternative to government subsidies that are pretty hectic and unstructured in Croatia at the moment. We also match make our customers with optimal technical solution, which fits their needs, and we will continue working on empowering local communities. So this is to sum it up maybe in two points so what the citizens get is an opportunity to join first cooperative procurement of solar PV systems in Croatia, and to really get full technical and administrative support that they told us they need through a service that we made and through local community activation activities that we had really in the field in the 10 cities that we visited. So these are some of the tools a calculator that we designed where people can check what what system would fit their house their home. I started with a solar solar phone where they can call us and access all the information they need practically immediately and for free. As I mentioned before we are really focusing on building strong partnerships and strong local collaborations. So we are especially counting there on the local governments that we are working with, with some other projects that are now running, and we are also teaming up with commercial partners. Today this is a Rifeisen Bank and tomorrow I'm sure there will be more of them supporting us on to reach our goal of 1000 small scale PV systems installed in for households in Croatia. So far, after five weeks of communication campaign on social media and in the classical media, we got almost 600 expressions of interest from citizens, and most of them are already done with all the technical checks that we are providing for them for free. And the thing that follows is to provide them opportunity to really part of to really become part of first procurement in the next few months. So what's next in in this particular project that we are running its continuation of the community mobilization activities. This is especially something that is very important for us we will really want to be in touch with the citizens so even though we are a small cooperative. We are only 20 people, we really want to make this movement to include as many citizens as possible. And we are active on the national scale. So what we are doing also is the steps towards more digitalized process. We also want to expand the network of our partners. So we will have the first first the demo first installations. By the end of this year so this is already in progress. We will build a virtual renewable energy community. We will manage to do that thanks to the funds from EU projects. So we are now currently involved in almost 10 EU projects and I must say that this was a huge. It was actually a huge boost for our cooperative to start to make a marketable solutions. And of course there are some regulatory changes that need to happen to really make energy democracy, like a full blast in Croatia. We also see replication potential for model in Macedonia and South East Europe. So what I think is really important from the model and I summarized here and it's necessary to make the, make this kind of business model work in your countries is to have a community on board to collaborate with local authorities to start and encourage local energy communities, and also to advocate for the regulatory changes so this is something that all of us needs. I hope I was on time. Thank you very much Melanie. Thank you very much Melanie. This was another aspect of view from the energy cooperatives. What is good is that in Croatia this energy cooperatives function several years in Croatia. Melanie's presentation showed a lot of information will stick with me for a while. This was a very, very real view of Macedonia but both of them can help us and the new legislation will enable us to act like some colleagues in the European Union and implement these models in our country. What this does is also like we've done in every action on energy democracy, someone who works on this topic for years. This is the energy package and he will address us with the new developments here in New York. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you. I'm sorry I don't have presentations but I'm trying to explain the presentation. As far as the group of buildings is informed in one of the first three citizens in a co-operation would like to make the same models, especially in the ways of exploitation, which are the problems that are still running to end the development of that world. And at the end of the day, the most important thing is that I'm trying to give you and the solutions that would be effective. We could as a creation invest in reals. We are seeing how citizens could invest more and more will be the size, see if it's more or less the explanation to be just for their own needs. And I think with the number of energy that they will produce a use and exploit and if they do not have enough to just start there are things to talk about here because they'll need to balance and have more than enough in the summer and plus than enough in the winter. And here for households that are included in this network, it's not really simple. This is our country, yes we do, for households that do not function a lot, for example, villas or houses or areas or mountains. The second way is to sell all the energy that they will produce with a new energy, they could do that It's now possible for small households, one person could do that for itself, but it's for big central, for example, in Argentina we have central, in Argentina it's the ones that go to the free market, they sell those energy from the market and they are specific to their and the country or plus. And those central's try to be part of it and the central got the expansion of the economy. It's not something that means to you, but it's for the election and the third way is something that came with the new energy and make it one. The first one is to consume just for themselves and the second one is just to sell it and you can use it as much as you need and the energy left, you sell it or you miss some of your buy from the operator, it sounds great, but in theory, but in practice there are problems. I'll try to explain those problems to you and they'll try to find solutions to them. The first problem to face, the potential investor is not my already mentioned, there are limits to the power plants and those maybe aren't the biggest reasons, but the second and the biggest problem is the double taxation. Instead of leaving the money to the citizens, the country can't recognize those citizens, their consumers and as well their investors. The country can't recognize them and double taxation. For those who don't know, who consists of the market, the market is consisted of the producers, the suppliers and consumers. So the consumer is a problematically recognized as a producer, it's double taxation and it's a problem that must be eliminated from those robotists. Secondly, it's very interesting how to learn which is you, when you buy from the producer, you sell the 10 kilo, you buy 10 kilo, you sell the 10 kilo, then you buy 10 kilo, and you sell the 10 kilo, then you sell the 10 kilo. It's another way of demotivation for these types of investments. The third problem, maybe the main problem, is the system. Input must be dealt with, so what you produce must be more clearly said, what you should do, plus what is prompted to the country must be equal to what is used and what is said. Statically, if we don't start building this on a daily level, especially in summer, because we produce only during the day, because more input from the solar energy in the summers and during the days, they are at their peaks and during winter and during the night, they are not part of the big market excretion. So we have a problem on how to use this energy or how to export it to Bulgaria, because we use this dock exchange and they go through Hungary and to Macedonia. It's also a big deal for this energy and another problem is the network of distribution, which is also a solution, when the energy is shown during the system, to buy 10% of the energy from renewables, which is great because renewables find their own market to be sold at. But there's also a threat here, it is 10% and in the biggest part of this 10% is the power made on small hydroelectrics. A few years ago, energy from the hydroelectricity is called renewables, now they are not. So if we reduce the motivation to invest in small hydroelectrics, if we reduce the motivation to have 10% of the power, if we reduce the amount of investors invested in solar and wind, I think that this is it, there are a lot of other things, but I think that we are on the right road, and we still have a lot of money to invest in. On a macro level, the problems needs to be solved before we go to micro levels. I hope that we will have the opportunity to invest in that ecosystem as consumers as well as producers, as they are called. Thank you very much, thank you very much for your attention, I will try to explain a lot of technical things, I am here for your questions. Thank you. We have listened to one of the other aspects, I am always saying that energy is not electric, it is the energy of the world, that is what we need to look at. We have also given an insight to some people who have already started to use it, it is the first chequery in this part. I hope that Macedonia will be the next one in the region, because they are using it as an energy democracy. We have listened to at the end, we all know what he said, now I am calling a few of you to participate in the discussion. Maya is the first one, the floor is yours, thank you, as I said in the first part, I knew that the presentations will be very interesting, and the topic is very interesting, the discussion as well. I would ask one question to Melanie, since I am directly into bettering this relative, what Irvin said, what is our situation, do you have any information, how increases this salt, is there a double taxation, how do they go over it, and how do they solve those solutions with the capacity of the network, so we can use some positive things and use them here. So we can use a positive example. Now for the question, I'm not sure if I understood everything correctly, but I will try to answer and if I go in the wrong direction just bring me back to the right path. So regarding the legislation that is currently on spot in Croatia. We have a law that is allowing citizens to become consumers to use their own electricity that they produce from the PV systems installed in their rooftops, and using the electrical grid. So let's say as a battery on a monthly basis, so it's a monthly scope, it's a net metering, but on a yearly scope it's a net billing, because if you over if you feed too much of the electricity that you produced into grid on the end of the month, it will be transferred to the next month with a factor of 0.8. So it's not one for one, but it's still it's still a pretty good model, compared to what we had before first of January 2019. So now a huge improvement and a huge boost for citizens to to really make a make a step forward and really decide to invest in solar PV. And according to our calculations, thanks to this model, they can, if you are talking about like a average Croatian household that is spending up to 5000 kilowatt hours per year. We need let's say a small system of five kilowatts, and the investment will be returned to them within six to eight years, depending on their location and the specific of the of the object, the specific of their house set the specific of the geographical position. So I would say that the legislation that we have now it's not perfect. But it's following European trends, and it's much better that it's been before. That's that's one part. And on the other part, regarding the recognition of energy communities in our legislation that unfortunately is not happening yet. At the moment, there is this transposition of renewable energy directive in place, but it's not, it's not fully implemented yet. And at the moment we don't have the term of energy community recognized in our laws. So because it's not even recognized or introduced the, the energy communities don't get any kind of recognition of additional benefits regarding, I don't know, text taxation exemptions. So, or, or any other, for that matter. But we are working on that, and we are really hoping that from 2021, we will have the energy communities defined really clearly in our legislation. Yes, thank you Melanie. Yes, that was the answer I needed actually for the for the legislation. I thought that you have a legislation for energy community in Croatia. But, okay, yes. That is the process also. We also don't have energy cooperatives recognized as a, as a true legal form. We have cooperatives and that's it. And we just added the word energy cooperatives and adjusted our business model to concentrate to really focus on renewable energy but we are just a cooperative, as any other. Yeah, that is very creative. Yeah, we could use that way also. Thank you Melanie. Yes. And we can have a successful story that we can present. We have tax benefits or, but it will be a practical presentation that can be offered to the municipalities as a solution they can implement on a, on a short term, on a long term. We have a lot to work on. It's a logical idea. I have a question. It's interesting what you should put a question it's very summing up all the presentations but I want to add up something. I will just from Croatia closely follow their, their steps and an interesting aspect that lingers through their project and activities they, they implement. They have in one project financing of the cooperative, but they set up the cooperative as a solar panel on a school. They give money to the municipality and they have return investments and from the from the new municipality and solar photovoltaics stay for the school to use them for years. And this is an interesting experience from Croatia I want to ask Melanie to explain this model to us. So we can see a solution in the region. Of course, yeah, so this is a work where we collaborate with public buildings with local authorities in Croatia. So, what is in the, like what is the highlight of our model. It's a crowd investing. So it's activating local citizens to put money to, to fund the capital investment to get the equipment to get the solar PV equipment that will be installed for the public building that will use this electricity. And the final user of this electricity is the building in in ownership of the of the local authority. It's a school, or in this case in Croatia it's a public library. So what they do is they, they secures like some defined amount of savings energy savings that they will achieve every year and for that amount of savings, they give us like money that we use to give back initial investment to the investors. So we are actually here acting as a mediator from the citizen who want to invest in their local project, and the final user or local authority and the building owned by local authority that will be the final user of the electricity that is produced. So, this is something that we implemented two years ago and we are really looking for we had three projects like this so far that are up and running, and it really attracted huge interest from from citizens. And so that was that was really great for us, we, we have to upgrade our model because unfortunately, we cannot. It's not very marketable for us as a cooperative so we are there investing our own resources that we get from EU funds. And it's very difficult because of the market specifics in Croatia to make money out of it, because we would need to be registered as energy suppliers. And like this, it's a really great story, it's something that we want to replicate, but we are still continuing to look for a model that will be really, you know, market based for us. And we are turning also to collaboration with private buildings as well, even though we will continue working with public authorities, even though it's. There's no much money for us there. Thank you Melanie, so there are models what Alexander mentioned I want to compare something would if you want a photovoltaics or water heating system on the household, and from the savings to pay the interest. So that's the goal how we can reach mass production of energy of solar energy. Any other questions from Miroslav Bogdanovsky have a question for Professor Buzharovsky. Professor Buzharovsky is one of the most polluted in Europe, they're interesting data he mentioned and if he can present them to us. Of course I opened the file so I will share it for you. Research articles. This is one about the cooling in summer but this one is more about the heating. It was a research big panel research of 600 households. In two parts of Skopje, in the area of Gniakovets, in the municipality of Centar, and in Chayr, Zhelezara and Gazibov municipalities. It came up in 2011 and it had detailed qualitative research with the households and interviews, etc. Just in brief what specifics of these two parts are because we compared other bigger and richer cities, Prague in Poland and the Budapest. The first thing was that households that were in the municipality of Chayr in that area were poor households with a lot of problems and a lot of issues with energy poverty, 40% of humidity and what we discussed, they had a lot of mold in the households as well, record levels of reduction of all possibilities of electrical facilities, water, light, etc. We made a lot of logistical regressions. When you see the influences, what was in the central part of Skopje, one of the main variables was the income. It showed there was a problem and central heating system and in Skopje several municipalities where if you're connected to the thermal heating, then you have higher electrical bills. As well, we reviewed those that showed they have problem with the heating. The main factors were the number of rooms in the household, the income and the number of members in the household. It also showed if they were connected to the central heating grid. This is not the case in the other central parts of Skopje. I will give you a link to the survey and to the analysis and in general there was a lot of things that surprised us in that sense and it's because we didn't expect that a big issue would be especially in some municipalities like Skopje, Severa and Železara where there's a huge percent of energy for households and as a whole in the whole household community, residential community. I will forward the links to you. Thank you, professor, we would like to read the survey and research. Your aspects are very interesting for me. You've researched very deeply, we don't have that in our country and those would be most helpful for us in the future if there's another question. I would ask from the present people here. Okay, then I would continue with the closing of the discussion with sincere wish since our speakers were extraordinary today and spoke about very big topics. I would like to continue the collaboration in the future and all the people present here today to feel free to talk to us. We'll be here for any further questions on this topic. We're syncing contact from the chat. I'll save all the publications and I'll make sure to send them to all the participants on the mail. Thank you again, everyone. Thank you for your presence both to the participants and the speakers and I hope that very nearly we'll see each other again. I wish you a great evening. Goodbye.