Participants from Germany, Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina had a chance to get to know each other, exchange their knowledge and experience on the energy transition with experts in the field as well as discuss plans for their common work in the upcoming year.
The following four twinning town pairs will be working together over the course of the next two years:
The first day of the event was held at the Landesvertretung Sachsen (Representation of the Free State of Saxony to the Federal Government). Over the course of the conference, the representatives of the municipalities and their twinning towns got to work on issues that brought them together and laid the foundations for their partnership in the next two years. Insightful presentations on different aspects of the cooperation between and among European municipalities with regards to the energy transition were prepared by Florian Schilling, Dr. Jana Karras, Svetlana Tesic, Sabina Hadžiahmetović, Prof. Dr. Mario Ragwitz as well as Anastasia Pociumban and enabled the participants to gain further knowledge as well as follow exciting discussions on the further development of the project.
The next day, guests were invited to the Embassies of Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here, they had the opportunity to dive deeper into areas of interest and discuss project ideas. The twinning town representatives decided to focus especially on topics such as innovation, renewable energy (e.g. solar power and wind energy), training of skilled workers in the energy transition, as well as municipal heating heating for their common work. These topics will provide the main theme for four policy papers that will be released as a product of the collaboration over the course of the next two-years. Additionally, participants came to an agreement on the time frame for the bilateral visits and joint online workshops in 2025.
We would like to express our gratitude to the Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) for enabling us to run this timely and important project as well as to Landesvertretung Sachsen (Representation of the Free State of Saxony to the Federal Government), the Embassy of Ukraine in Germany, Embassy of Moldova in Germany and Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Germany for hosting the conference. Especially, we would like to thank Deputy Ambassador of Ukraine Iryna Samchenko, Almira Ramić, First Secretary, Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Oleg Popov, First Secretary, Embassy of Moldova for opening the conference.
A special ‚Thank you‘ goes to the representatives of the twinning town pairs for taking part and spending two days with us in Berlin. We look forward to the cooperation and development of innovative ideas over the next two years!
This kick-off event marked the official start to a two-year cooperation between four twinning town pairs as part of the project “Energy Transition Town Twinninings 3.0”. In 2025, the municipalities will deepen their cooperation through a series of online workshops. In addition, representatives of the municipalities will visit each other to further discuss local development towards energy transition in person.
For more information on the progress of the project, visit our project page or the website of the Renewable Energy Agency (AEE).
Berlin Governance Platform gGmbH
Aleksandra Kotur
Agentur für Erneuerbare Energien e. V.
Anika Schwalbe
