On October 19, Vilnius Gediminas technical university (VILNIUS TECH) hosted a virtual interactive & interregional seminar with all SHREC Interreg Europe project partners, stakeholders and the general public. The event's topic: "Urban planning and sustainability taking into consideration the fields of building energetic and environmental engineering". The event was moderated by Laima Balciune, Head of the Sunrise Valley Science & Technology Park, with the help of Vilma Puriene, Head of VILNIUS TECH Knowledge and technology transfer centre.

The moderators were broadcast live from the video studio in VILNIUS TECH Creativity and Innovation centre "LinkMenų fabrikas". Live streaming made the seminar more dynamic and easier to follow. Let alone it also helped to overcome the mass tiredness of watching the "Zoom" screen.

Green Hydrogen in Lithuania and Low Carbon Society

The interactive seminar began with the Daiva Garbaliauskaite, Vice-minister's of Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Lithuania, welcoming word and short presentation on Lithuanian strategy towards Climate Neutral Energy. Vice-minister has presented Lithuania's and Europe's renewable energy shares (RES) targets, with the main targets on wind energy, prosumers and RES in transport. Furthermore, on-shore and off-shore wind energy strategies in Lithuania were also highlighted. Moreover, Vice-minister has also presented a new topic in Lithuania – legal framework and financial incentives for Green Hydrogen in Lithuania.

After the Vice-minister's speech, Professor of the Department of Urban Design at VILNIUS TECH, Gintaras Stauskis has talked about the Low Carbon Society. Professor has presented the priorities of sustainable urbanism, highlighted urban development problems, showed examples of Lithuania's sustainable buildings and expressed the essential goals of the sustainable city.

Solar energy in Lithuania

Agne Dauksiene, Head of Strategy Development Department and Member of Supervisory Board at Ignitis Latvia SIA, talked about green energy in the city. Ignitis Solar Parks, the unique virtual prosumers model with the political framework & subsidies for green energy, were highlighted during the presentation.

The presentation of Ignitis was followed by Vitas Maciulis, Lithuanian Solar Energy Association's President's introduction on Solar energy in the renovation. The case study of a zero-emission multi-family house in Lithuania was presented and discussed.

Wind energy and R&D activities on hydrogen in Lithuania

After the break, Urte Daskeviciute, President of Lithuanian Wind Energy Association, presented the past, present & future of wind energy in Lithuania.

Following the presentation on wind energy, Dr Darius Milčius, Laboratory Chief of Center for Hydrogen Energy Technologies at Lithuania Energy Institute, talked about the R&D activities on hydrogen in Lithuania and projects scaling-up.

Workshops and participants interaction

After the lunch break, the seminar participants got a chance to interact a little more – two workshops on the topics of "Energy communities – attracting civil society to the decarbonisation process" and "Support schemes for development and employment renewables" were organised. At the workshops, participants talked about integrated photovoltaic (PV) systems and the attraction of municipalities to PV development in the regions. In the other session, participants discussed lessons learnt in the previous financing period (2014-2020) and overviewed the new financing period. Moreover, they discussed the challenges waiting ahead for promoting renewable energy usage.

Around 80 people have registered for the event, 60 people from them have attended the event. Attendees shared the broad professional expertise in the energy sector: the event received participants from the Lithuanian Ministry of Energy, Ignitis, Lithuanian Energy Institute, professionals from various other companies & Lithuanian universities.

During the event, best practices short video movies were shown, find them here.

Find the presentations of the speakers here.