Balkan Solar Roofs

There is still a widespread belief in the Western Balkans that communities and citizens are only final energy consumers. This leads to a very low interest in community energy from both municipal decision makers and citizens. While previous efforts have partly managed to change this attitude in small municipalities, larger cities, such as the ones targeted by the project, still lack political and societal support for community energy concepts.

Man installs photovoltaic system on a roof; Photo © Elena Elisseva

The project’s target group consisted of the city administrations of three large cities: Kragujevac (Serbia), Poreč (Croatia), and Mostar (BiH). Several activities aimed at enabling these cities to foster participative urban solar power and heat. First, the three city groups – multi-disciplinary groups of municipal employees – took part in an e-collaboration lab where they learned about the different forms and benefits of urban solar community energy. Furthermore, they determined which persons and institutions they needed to be involved in for successful promotion of solar community energy concepts. On this basis, they developed a local community energy roadmap. This map was meant to guide the municipality, community energy groups, small and medium enterprises, and citizens through the necessary actions for developing and installing new community solar projects over the next two years. In a subsequent communication workshop, group members learned how to efficiently communicate benefits of urban solar community energy. 

Additionally, the project team and the cities rolled out a campaign to mobilise citizens and SMEs for the production of community-owned energy. This included posters and wide outreach in social and other media starting at city level in Kragujevac, Mostar, and Poreč. Lastly, the project team ensured that experiences would be shared beyond pilot city borders by engaging cities to follow the example and reaching out to policymakers to make sure national frameworks were supportive of citizen energy. 

• As a pioneer, the project showed that the installation of photovoltaics has been successful in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and illustrated the local and regional benefits of Balkan Solar Roofs through 6 videos. In addition, 45 cities signed a solar charter, of which 20 cities published posters on solar roofs via the Balkan Solar Roofs online tool. 
• In February 2023, City of Poreč-Parenzo opened the Poreč Sunny office, a physical place (the first of its kind in Croatia), where citizens, with prior notice, are able to book an appointment, and receive advisory support related to the possibility of using solar energy through their own Solar (photovoltaic) power plant. In addition, the Poreč Sunny office has already organised several activities including the sunny info day for citizens and local entrepreneurs and civil servants, as well as a regional round table. Poreč Sunny office will stay open and keep on providing technical and advisory support after the Balkan solar roofs project ends. Necessary financial funds for the Poreč Sunny office viability will be provided by the City of Poreč-Parenzo budget and through future EU project co financing. 
• In Mostar in three public facilities: the Third Primary School, the Sunce and Zvjezdica kindergartens, at the end of 2023 they installed solar power plants for self-consumption with a power of 37 kW, and the planned production is about 46,000 kWh for one year, and the expected reduction of CO2 emissions by about 45 tons for year. This project was co-financed by UNDP BiH. For five public facilities: Kindergarten Radobolja, Health Centre, and primary schools: Ivana Gundulića, Zalik, IV primary, the project has completed the tender procedure and expected that solar power plants with a total power of 110 kW would have been installed very soon at these facilities as well. Further, it also secured funds for a solar power plant on the roof of the institution for young people with special needs Los Rosales (23 kW), the planned completion of the installation of the equipment is in 2024.