1[] Svako pozivanje na Kosovo se čini u kontekstu Rezolucije 1244 Saveta bezbednosti Ujedinjenih nacija (1999. god.)
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1[] Svako pozivanje na Kosovo se čini u kontekstu Rezolucije 1244 Saveta bezbednosti Ujedinjenih nacija (1999. god.)
]]>1[] Svako pozivanje na Kosovo se čini u kontekstu Rezolucije 1244 Saveta bezbednosti Ujedinjenih nacija (1999. god.)
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The sun provides more than enough energy to meet the entire world’s energy demand. In fact, solar and wind power could supply global energy demand 100-times over! While so far, the use of solar power has been rather limited in Kosovo[1], we are slowly seeing positive progress in harnessing this great potential. The urgency to move towards low-carbon development – and ultimately, carbon neutrality – coupled with the dramatically decreasing cost of technology is making solar power an attractive source of energy, in fact becoming the least cost solution in many cases.
Energy production is the biggest contributor to climate change. The use of fossil fuels – in the case of Kosovo[1], the burning of lignite coal, also significantly impacts the quality of the air we breathe – affecting our health, our wellbeing and livelihoods. Moving away from coal to cleaner energy sources will improve the quality of air and make cities healthier and more livable. Tackling climate change is critical to a sustainable future. It is one of our key priorities for us as UNDP. Transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy is the only way the world can effectively tackle climate change. Solar and wind power plus energy storage will at the same time reduce the cost of energy long term.
UNDP’s “Support for Sustainable Prizren – Initiating Urban NAMAs (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions)” has been a pioneering project in Kosovo[1] in stepping up climate action at the local level. The project has been funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) with co-financing from the Municipality of Prizren and UNDP. It has supported the development of a cross-sectoral investment plan to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through a participatory approach – based on the GHG inventory conducted. Through establishment of the Green Growth Center, public-private partnerships have been facilitated. One of the pilot activities has included installation of a solar photovoltaic (PV) system on top of Prizren’s Municipality Building. The solar panels will produce an estimated 30% of the energy that the Municipality Building needs.
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Faton Citaku, Renewable Energy Engineer, working with local Solar Factory Jaha, tells us about the importance of this endeavor: „Approximately 97% of Kosovo’s[1] electricity needs are provided by two power plants: Kosova A[1] and Kosova B[1] which use coal as fuel. Although recently there have been made major investments on filters to reduce the harmful substances that are released from coal burning process, Kosovo[1] still has a significant pollution from these two power plants. Unfortunately, until recent years, there has been limited attention to the impact and environmental impacts.“
Solar panels produce electricity by transforming the continuous flow of energy from the sun into electricity. As simple as that! However, this process requires investments and Kosovo[1] is in a good position to become sustainable in this area. Mr. Citaku confirms this:
Kosovo’s[1] potential for generating energy from renewable sources, more specifically from photovoltaic systems, are significant and very important in protecting the environment. Kosovo’s[1] geographical location is considered relatively good for implementing photo-voltaic systems – which will make them very profitable. Kosovo[1] has more than 270 sunny days per year. Kosovo[1] is in a very favorable position to continue harnessing its solar power potential.
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Rather than looking at solar as a purchase that has a cost, solar panels can be seen as an investment. It also requires international knowledge and experience. Michael Gold, Managing Director of Crimson Capital, has explored solar energy system potentials in Kosovo[1]:
“Kosovo[1] gets most of its electricity from its coal power plants A and B. Even with these power plants, Kosovo[1] does not have enough energy to meet the needs of its people and businesses. At the same time, Kosovo[1] has committed to increasing the percentage of its energy from green, sustainable sources such as photovoltaic panels, wind, and biomass under the Energy Charter Treaty. Until recently, there has been a very limited number of solar power systems installed in Kosovo[1], but that is now starting to change.” said Mr. Gold.
He thinks that both public and private actors, as well as households, need to be made more aware of the opportunities and economic benefits of installing PV systems. Coordination is needed between households, businesses, and independent power producers (IPP) installing solar panels, as well as local energy and finance consultants, and financial institutions to accelerate adoption of new PV systems. “Knowledge is power.“
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Mr. Gold told us that for solar IPPs, the Energy Regulatory Office (ERO) needs to finalize a new procedure for authorizing new IPPs. It needs to determine the electricity price at which the IPP can sell its solar energy. “ERO is currently developing, with support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a new auction procedure for accomplishing this. For businesses, public buildings and households that primarily consume themselves the solar energy they would produce and don’t transfer any of the power to the electricity grid, they can install solar panels now. In the case that they would like to transfer excess electricity back to the grid to further their energy costs, it would be helpful for ERO to increase the size of projects that qualify for what is called net metering, where the user gets an offset for excess solar electricity produced that they transfer back to the electricity grid. The current cap is 100 kW. It is recommended that this be increased to at least 400-500 kW”, said Mr. Gold.
According to Mr. Gold, economic growth requires the availability of sufficient energy. Increasing solar installations will create quality jobs for solar panel manufacturers, installers and maintenance personnel. “In addition, it will support other sectors, such as the metal processing industry for metal support structures, piping, etc. Overall, increasing the use of solar power will create new sales and jobs, while greening the economy and Kosovo[1] as a whole, and reducing the cost of energy to businesses and households that install solar”, he said.
USAID, through its Kosovo[1] Energy Security of Supply (KESS) Project has performed a comprehensive analysis of the current solar sector in Kosovo[1] and its potential for the future, and has made recommendations to the regulatory framework to accelerate the further adoption of solar power. An important finding of the study is that installing solar panels is affordable and cost effective for many households and businesses, and that at current prices and conditions is now often financeable by the local banks and microfinance institutions.
UNDP IN KOSOVO[1] WALKING THE TALK – MOVING TO SOLAR POWER
As UNDP, we are determined to reduce our own carbon footprint – and as an organization, we have already made good progress in making UNDP “greener”. UNDP in Kosovo[1] has been closely monitoring our energy consumption and carbon emissions over the past years, and actively sought solutions for reducing our emissions.
UNDP in Kosovo[1] is proud to be among the 20 UNDP offices worldwide, out of almost 170 globally, to have installed solar panels in order to reduce our carbon footprint.
The installation of a 27 kWp grid-connected PV system has just been completed. It is expected to provide around 24% of the total electricity demand of the UN House in Pristina which houses several UN entities. The system will allow us to cut our CO2 emissions by approximately 36 tons annually (which means 22% reduction of CO2 emissions), effectively reducing UNDP Kosovo’s[1] carbon footprint and burden on the environment. The office will also be less dependent on the Kosovo[1] grid for electricity supply and have reduced electricity bills. This investment was made possible through the support received from UNDP’s Green Energy Solutions Team.
We look forward to the further greening of Kosovo’s[1] energy supply over the next several years!
1[] All references to Kosovo in this document shall be understood in the context of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999).
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A snappy Facebook status dated 23 January 2022 describes the case of a consumer whose electricity use was on that day covered 99 per cent by solar panels installed at their property. There is also a chart that visualizes the data to support this case, and the text concludes with a rhetorical question: „When they work this well in winter, what do you think, how do they work during summer?“
But who says this, and what do they know? The person who says it is Gentiana Alija Shala, solar energy engineer and the only woman founder and CEO of one out of more than a dozen solar companies in Kosovo[1]. She is part of the Women in STEM Network in Kosovo[1] where she has been an active member by sharing great ideas on how to motivate more girls and women to start their careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
She’s also a self-described environmentalist and feminist: two hard-earned qualities, considering the efforts she puts into promoting renewable energy production and into helping fellow women engineers get to a position where they’re empowered to achieve their professional potential. As to what she knows, let’s backtrack a little.
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Gentiana liked being at the center stage ever since she was a child: „I participated in competitions, I was the presenter at end-of-year celebrations — any event that happened at school, I was always there.“ Starting from the fourth grade until high school she had her own radio show on Radio Kosova[1], where she talked to grown-up celebrities about their childhoods.
Apart from being a social butterfly, she was also a zealous student who excelled in physics and mathematics. This affinity for natural sciences guided her in a path of studying them all the way through high school and university, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in Electroenergetics. During five years of studies, she maintained side jobs as a math instructor to her peers and as a lecturer on computer networks.
Her academic and subsequently professional path took an exciting turn one day towards the end of her university studies: while she was unwinding from a busy day, a documentary came on TV that told the story of a guy who had built his own solar panels. This piqued her interest so intensely that it pushed her to learn more about solar energy, going so far as to talk to her mentor and change her thesis subject into a topic exploring this newfound passion.
„I figured I’d write the thesis and learn more in the process,“ Gentiana explains what seems to be the model of thinking she uses generally to achieve her goals.
She studied all the materials she could find through professors and friends that were working in the up-and-coming industry, and when she felt she’d exhausted those, she started making phone calls and writing emails to companies for a chance to work with them. One of those companies gave her a chance, and true to form, she made the most out of it while at the same time indulging her curious streak elsewhere.
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„I started working for this solar panel installation company, and in that process of learning and working, there were things that I did not understand and for which they could not give me solutions,“ she explains with vigor. „So I opened a LinkedIn account and starting training online with some Indian engineers through screen sharing; this way I could see their work process and figure out how they were doing their projects.“
After an intense year of working hard while jumping through hoops to overcome challenges that come as a matter of course for a woman in a field constituted almost entirely by men, she was ready for the next step in her career.
Risking it for the biscuit
When Gentiana started using LinkedIn to fill the gaps in her knowledge and skills, she also took the time to promote her work by posting all her projects on the platform. That’s how she got discovered by a well-established Italian company in the field of solar energy.
Disgruntled by the prospect of continuing her path in Kosovo[1] where all career paths seemingly led her to work in small-scale companies that operate in the local market and excited to be headhunted by an international company, the contract she got offered to work in Italy was initially a no-brainer. But she gave it some thought anyway, and in the end decided to go with another option altogether.
It was time to break the peace she had reluctantly made at the beginning of her career with the fact that no matter her performance and the profits she would bring to her employers, she could never reach a position at an equal level with male engineers. Instead, she felt that she had brought herself to a place where she could take the matter into her own hands.
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„I started to wonder why I don’t start something myself, then I kept thinking ‘No, they will never take me seriously,’ but in the end I decided I’d get it started because you never know,“ she remembers her musings at the beginning of her entrepreneurship journey. „I thought to myself: ‘If I could win big projects for my employers, why wouldn’t I win them for myself?'“
She pitched her idea to a previous colleague who agreed to invest in her company as a co-founder, and she established her own solar company. Starting with small projects for farmers that install solar panels at their farms as part of a grant scheme by the Ministry of Agriculture, she moved on to bigger and bigger projects and eventually got to a point where most of her company Alfa Solar’s market share is outside of Kosovo[1].
Alfa Solar now has three engineers in its staff, all of them women, each in charge of separate projects based in different countries. The company in Italy where Gentiana almost went to work is now one of her company’s clients.
Regardless of the expansion in the international market, she diligently sets up meetings each week to pitch her company’s services to local businesses with high energy consumption.
„The first step is the promotion: I present to them how much carbon dioxide they would save in a year; I illustrate using the number of trees it would equal planting — I try to show the environmental profits as much as the financial ones,“ she explains her approach in these meetings. „It is interesting that many businesspeople are interested in making a difference starting from themselves in this aspect; they say, ‘Someone might see me [make the shift to solar energy] and so the idea might spread around.'“
Gentiana sees the potential of renewable energy in Kosovo[1], where progress towards such a shift has been slow partly due to heavy dependence on its large coal reserves, and is determined to do her part in speeding things up. „A big problem we have in Kosovo[1] is that many don’t see the value of solar energy and don’t trust it because they don’t know that solar panels can be connected to the grid — so solar panels are the primary source of energy, and when there is a lack of production, the building receives it from the electricity distributor,“ she explains.
A good example of this sort of exchange is the Municipality of Prizren, where through UNDP’s pioneering climate action project “Support for Sustainable Prizren – Initiating Urban NAMAs (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions)” solar panels were installed on top of the Municipality Building. Not only does the system produce around 30 per cent of the building’s energy needs — cutting carbon emissions by roughly 2,000 tons per year — but based on an agreement between the municipality and Kosovo’s[1] energy distributor, any excess electricity generated in this manner will be exported to the grid and then compensated.
Rising by lifting others
Talking to Gentiana, it’s easy to discern that she has found her calling and now eagerly wants to make a mark on the world by sharing it with others. „The way I see it, my role is to promote the [solar energy] sector in Kosovo[1]; it’s not technically my job but I do it passionately because my vision in light of the climate crisis is to contribute to the transition from coal dependency towards increased use of renewable energy.“
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She’s quick to admit that juggling the several roles she’s undertaken hasn’t been an easy feat, and she’s given some thought to the steps that the responsible authorities can take to lighten the load for Gentiana and others like her.
„The Minister of Economy has taken a step towards cooperation by inviting each [solar panel system] installation company to ask us for ideas on what we can include in the strategy,“ she notes, referring to the Solars’ Forum organized in the summer of 2021, where Minister Artane Rizvanolli said her team were listening „with pencils in hand“ to learn from the attendees in order to inform upcoming policies in the field.
„What I said there was that we [the entrepreneurs] need to be relieved from the responsibility of promotion: We need to be at stage two, where I go to a meeting with a potential client without having to promote solar energy but where we both know what we’re talking about,“ she explains. „And another thing, we need training — bring foreign experts to teach us or take us abroad to learn so that we don’t have to keep looking outside Kosovo[1] for professional staff.“
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When she recruited her team of engineers, Gentiana explains that before they could start working, they underwent a period of training during which she prepared them for all the stages of a project. „Now they no longer need to come to work in the office and can carry out projects in the way they choose, as long as we can stick to our deadlines,“ she says.
Knowing the importance of role models in personal development, she tries to set an example for her colleagues as well as other women in her line of work and beyond. „I used to suffer from a complex of inferiority; when I went to client meetings, some big bosses would sit at their big tables and they’d invite me to sit at a low table in the corner where I felt small and inferior,“ she remembers.
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„I kept thinking, ‘What can I do that will make me feel powerful?’ until it hit me: heels. I can’t help but feel confident when I’m wearing heels so I started going to meetings dressed to the tee and always found reasons to be standing up — either by doing a presentation of my work or by observing the building — so that they could see that I proudly take up my space.“
„I don’t sit in the corner where I’m told to sit.“
Her piece of advice to young women dealing with similar issues is to focus their attention on the everyday things that make them feel confident, and to put effort into making those things a part of their routine, whatever they may be.
Another piece of advice that has carried her through quite some situations is to learn to take some annoying but ultimately harmless behaviors in her stride. To illustrate what she means, Gentiana uses an anecdote from one of her countless experiences while at work.
„Once I went to measure an object for a large project, and after greeting the owner, I was ready to get handed the keys to the building, but he just kept standing there as if waiting for someone. After some time, I said, ‘Do you know what we are waiting for?’ and he asked who would be coming to take the measurements, so I told him that that’s what I was there for.“
She was expecting the funny-in-a-dismissive-way comments that followed, so, determined to be unbothered by them, she set up the ladder and climbed onto the roof.