Fourth Energy Summit in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Neum, April 25 – 27

The Fourth Energy Summit in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) will take place April 25 – 27 in Neum. The gathering is organized and financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

The summit will be focused on sustainable development of the energy sector in BiH, renewable energy sources, energy market, impediments to investment in the energy sector, and energy efficiency.

More than 400 representatives from the Bosnia and Herzegovina energy sector, legislative and executive level of government, political parties and non-government organizations and media are expected to participate in the summit in order to find solutions to help development of the energy sector.

The Fourth Energy Summit is organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, State Electricity Regulatory Commission, Regulatory Commission for Energy in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Regulatory Commission for Energy of Republika Srpska.

Brief overview of the Third Energy Summit

Last year, at the Third Summit, it was concluded that there was an increase in market liberalization in the open electricity market in Bosnia and Herzegovina: more than 60 domestic companies changed their electricity supplier after having received cheaper prices in the open market, and a significantly higher number of the companies had negotiated a better price with domestic power companies.

It was emphasized that the production of electricity from renewable sources increased by 62 percent in 2016, but that there was still a need for improvement of the legal framework and impediments to investors. Another message from the summit was that more investment in energy efficiency was necessary to drive the domestic industry of materials, equipment and services. The energy efficiency potential in BiH was estimated at more than EUR 2.5 billion (BAM 5 billion).