The first joint meeting of the EU-Russia Working groups on energy efficiency and climate change took place in Moscow on February 28 with assistance of REEEP. Previously the issues of energy efficiency and climate change were coordinated separately by EU-Russia Dialogue on Environment and Energy Dialogue.

Co-operation between EU and Russia on climate change and energy is regulated within the framework of two sector dialogues aimed at implementation of provisions of the EU-Russia Roadmap on Common Economic Space. The EU-Russia Energy Dialogue, launched in 2000, addresses energy security, mitigation of barriers to investments in the energy sector, cooperation on new technologies and infrastructure projects; as well as energy efficiency. Bilateral cooperation on the environment including climate change was launched in 2006 through the EU-Russia Dialogue on the Environment.

“Climate change, energy efficiency and energy security have been recognized by the G8 as key global challenges, are of great importance to both the EU and Russia and will remain central in the co-operation between Russia and the European Union” – stated Mr. Marc Franco, the Head of the European Delegation to Moscow.

During the joint meeting the experts from the EU and Russia represented the best practices related to technological, solutions, policy and financial tools for improving climate and energy security. Russian experts demonstrated achievements on energy efficiency technologies in buildings and interesting developments for improvement of municipal energy efficiency using ESCO. The EU experts represented successful experience in terms of policy and regulation mechanisms, i.e. EU climate action and renewable energy package stipulates three 20% targets related to improvement of energy efficiency, reduction of GHGs and share of renewables in final energy consumption. As for the policy developments in Russia, Mr. Mikhailov, the Director of energy policy department of the Ministry of Energy and Industry, confirmed that energy efficiency is a priority of the Russian Energy Strategy, however weak policy remains Russia’ Achilles’ heel and the Law on energy efficiency needs improvement.

The experts from both Working groups underlined that Russia and EU altogether deliver huge potential for energy efficiency which may contribute significantly to the climate change mitigation and therefore is a win-win strategy for both Russia and EU to deal in the most cost-effective way with many energy related challenges and climate change.

As a result of the meeting the Co-chairs of the Working groups signed the agreement on which recognized the need for further joint activities and outlined the priority areas for cooperation, including creation of innovative financial incentives facilitating market penetration of climate-friendly energy efficiency technologies, harmonization of policy and regulatory mechanisms in Russia and the European Union for increasing energy efficiency and mitigation of climate change; development of energy efficient technological solutions, information exchange on energy efficiency and climate change related statistics, development of common indicators and projections; adaptation to climate change in the energy sector.