Upon an invitation by the organisers the Chairman and Executive Director of IENE participated in this year’s international conference organised by the Athenian Policy Forum on June 30-July 1 .In a well attended event which was held in the leafy campus of Deree College just outside Athens, the Chairman of IENE, Costis Stambolis expanded on the theme of “ The Evolving Energy Scene in SE Europe”Upon an invitation by the organisers the Chairman and Executive Director of IENE participated in this year’s international conference organised by the Athenian Policy Forum on June 30-July 1 .In a well attended event which was held in the leafy campus of Deree College just outside Athens, the Chairman of IENE, Costis Stambolis expanded on the theme of “The Evolving Energy Scene in SE Europe”.
In his presentation which can be viewed here Stambolis stressed the challenges which are faced by the SEE region as it has to cope with two major issues at the same time. On the one hand there are increased energy security challenges, especially in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the continuing war,now in its second year, and on the other the arduous path toward decarbonisation which most countries in the Balkans have more or less embarked upon.
“It is quite clear that there are no quick fix solutions, especially when it comes to decarbonisation and given the region’s historic and great social reliance on coal/lignite for power generation”, observed IENE’s Chairman. He concluded by saying that, “moving away from coal without endangering big scale social unrest, new jobs and new skills will have to be introduced in the thousands. This is no easy task but latest investment trends,as identified in a latest IENE study and clearly described in the presentation, towards gas and renewables, are giving hope that the region may eventually (over the next 15-20 years) be able to transform itself to cleaner and more efficient forms of energy”.
