he municipalities of Ajka, Budaörs, Répceszemere, Sopronkövesd, Szarvas and the II. district of Budapest represented themselves during the event, most of them have already known each other from previous events. The first day of the 2-day event had been taken place at the local authority of Szarvas, the host city of the workshop, where after the introduction of the participants, Krisztina Severnyák, bulding energy efficiency expert, held a presentation about how important energy efficiency is in order to reach the EU climate goals and also about the legislation and possibilities for ’Near  0 Energy Buldings’ and greener procurement.

Afterwards, Zsolt Zábrádi, the expert of the Megérti Kft., presented good practices in integrated urban planning and also explained how integration should occur among the different departmants of municipalities. Then, the expert held a groupwork for the participants where they tried to seek solutions for urban planning challanges of their districts.

After the expert presentations, organized by the municipality of Szarvas, the participants got the chance to visit the local biogas plant, that is the biggest and most modern facility in Hungary with its 4,14 MW capacity. During the study visit, the manager of the facility presented the technical and management background of the plant. Afterwards, one of the local thermal wells was visited, one of those that provide heating energy for the municipality by geothermal energy.

Study tour in the local biogas plant

The second day of the event has been started with another visit to the local hydropower plant in Békésszentandrás, that with its 2 MW capacity provide electricity for about 3000 households.

After the study visit, the workshop continued in Békésszentandrás with a focus on the elaboration of Energy Plans within the framework of the project by 4 municipalities. Firstly, Zsófia Pej, the expert of the Energiaklub held a presentation about the added-value of the Energy Plans, namely how they can facilitate the municipalities in the elaboration of their SECAPs and Climate Strategies and substantially why it is exteremely important to issue the matter of climate change at municipal level.

After the presentation, Kata Győri, the national project manager of the Multiply project, lead an Energy Plan groupwork, firstly presenting the timeframe and requirements during the elaboration of the Energy Plans and a guideline of the first, qualitative part of the plan. Then, the municipalities tried to propose experts of their authorities who can be charge of the elaboration of the different sub-parts of the strategy. After the interactive groupwork, the participants discussed during their last roundtable exercise what are their challanges regarding the data collection for the Energy Plan’s mitigation calculator and tried to come up with ideas to overcome on them.

The first workshop for the technical staff proved to be very productive where municipal representatives got the chance to expand their knowledge and share their experiences via presentations, groupworks and study tours. The project reached an important milestone by clarifying the timeframe and the next steps regarding the elaboration of the Energy Plans. After the event the 4 municipalities-Ajka, Répceszemere, Sopronkövesd, II. district of Budapest- who committed to work out their Energy Plans can start to elaborate the first parts of their strategy, taking their first steps towards decreasing their CO2 emission and energy consumption for a greener future in their settlements.