Polish diplomat Artur Lorkowski new director of Energy Community

Artur Lorkowski will lead the Energy Community Secretariat over the next three years. He replaced Janez Kopač after his nine-year tenure.

The Ministerial Council of the Energy Community decided in Belgrade to appoint Artur Lorkowski as the director of the Energy Community Secretariat for three years.

His term started on December 1.

Before the appointment, Artur Lorkowski (at the photo with Dirk Buschle, Deputy Director & Head of Legal, Energy Community Secretariat) was Vice-President of the Management Board of Poland’s National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management.

Lorkowski was Vice-President of the Poland’s National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, which participates in the initiative for the transition of coal regions in the Western Balkans

The fund participates in the Platform Initiative in Support of Coal Regions in Transition in the Western Balkans and Ukraine on behalf of the Polish government. The platform, led by the World Bank, was launched in December 2020.

In the fund, he oversaw the work of climate change adaptation, water protection, external funds, zero-emission transport, monitoring, restructuring and recovery, LIFE, innovation, and public aid.

Biography

According to the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management website, Artur Lorkowski is a graduate of the Warsaw School of Economics and the National School of Public Administration.

Lorkowski was the deputy director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for energy security and climate change until 2013. Between 2018 and 2019, he served as a special envoy of the minister of foreign affairs for climate affairs. Between 2013 and 2017, he was the ambassador of Poland in Austria. He has been a member of the foreign service since 2010.

Before that, from 2003, he was the deputy director in the Office of the Committee for European Integration, responsible for sectoral policies. He started working there in 2001.

The new director of the Energy Community Secretariat has been involved in climate change issues since 2006. He advised the president of COP24 during the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP24 in Katowice in 2018. He worked for the UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s Climate Action Summit in 2019, according to the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management.