22.11.2024.
Attendees of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs visited the Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund to get acquainted with its work and activities.The visit was organised by the adbisor to the director of the Fund Irena Dubravec, who thanked the head of the professional diplomatic study at the Diplomatic Academy, Ivan Mijić, PhD, for their cooperation, as he and the studnets expressed great interest in the Fund's activities.
Deput director of the Fund, Mirko Budiša, addressed the guests, presenting to them the Fund’s scope of work. “The Fund was established in late 2003 as an extrabudgetary institution with the goal of co-financing environmental protection and energy efficiency projects. With Croatia’s accession to the European Union, the Fund assumed a double role; on the one has as technical assistance to those interested in energy renovation projects of private and public buildings, and on the other hand as Intermediate Body Level 2, an evaluation body for these projects," Budiša explained.
As the most famous programme of the Fund, he pointed out the programme of energy renovation of family houses, for which the Fund provided a record 120 million euros this year. He also mentioned EU calls for the reconstruction of public sector buildings and apartment buildings, and repairing damage after the earthquake, which will keep the construction sector very busy. He also referred to waste as a useful resource: "Everything that can be separately collected and recovered should be separated and further used in accordance with the circular economy. However, there is also a part that cannot be used, which must be disposed of in waste management centres according to the highest environmental standards," Budiša explained.
Nirvana Franković Mihelj, PhD, held a lecture for the participants of the Diplomatic Academy on the topic of climate change. "Today we are no longer talking about climate change; we are talking about the climate crisis," Franković Mihelj warned in her presentation. She pointed out that changes in the main climate indicators in previous periods were much slower, while now they were monitored every year. "While the monitoring so far has focused mainly on CO2 emissions resulting from various activities, now special attention was on monitoring the sinks, i.e. potential of different types of land to absorb greenhouse gases," explained Franković Mihelj, underlining the particular importance of green infrastructure projects that were supported by the Fund for the purpose of better adaptation to climate change.
