FAO Armenia

The 8-year project will be coordinated by FAO and will, among else, support activities aimed at:
- protecting forests by decreasing fuel wood demand through improved energy efficiency in rural households;
- grow skills and capacities of local companies, craftsmen and consultants in the field of energy efficiency for buildings and heating devices;
- enhance the abilities of local communities in sustainable forest management.

In this first three year tranche of the project the main activities foreseen are three:

Two of them carried out by Roberto Vaccaro and one by Christian Hoffman. Christian Hoffman’s activity stretch over 6 years, from the third to the eight. In third year the first of his activity will start.

Activities carried out by Roberto Vaccaro in the first year

Activity 3.1.2: Institutional Support in applying climate adaptive forest governance guidelines including rural EE and climate change mainstreaming

B. Development of Local Energy Efficiency Action Plans (at municipality level)

Elaboration of a template of the Climate action plans and of a questionnaire to be shared with the municipalities in order to retrieve necessary information.

In the first year the Eurac Institute for Renewable Energy will involve local municipalities in target areas to support them in the development of Local Energy Efficiency Action Plans (LEEAP) at municipality level. The activity will be developed in close collaboration with the FAO Project Management team. For this purpose Eurac develops a template for the reporting with corresponding easy-to-follow guidelines for the completion of the LEEAPs and a questionnaire for data collection (more details underneath). Afterwards it will be the duty of the FAO project to follow up with the elaboration of the LEEAP for each involved municipality. EURAC will review at least 2 developed LEEAPs to verify the quality of the implementation and to provide guidance on future elaborations.

This activity will entail:

- the elaboration of a questionnaire to be shared with the municipalities to collect information of relevance for the following two tasks of the activity. The information will refer to the legislative and institutional framework, main relevant statistics, climatic and population projections, and the availability of data concerning energy efficiency issues.

- the elaboration of a guideline for the development of LEEAPS, inspired by the European directive for the elaboration of NEEAPS (National Energy Efficiency Action Plans), which will be used by the EPIU for the subsequent elaboration of the Action Plans. The guideline is integrated with an easy to follow template for reporting.

- the elaboration of an elemental and succinct guideline for local service provider for the development of a user friendly programme (based on open source software) allowing the easy collection and analysis of the municipal data that represents the baseline for action plan elaboration

The LEEAP plans will increase ownership and accountability of the municipalities. The action plan integrates, if available, climatic and population projections and resource needs, considers an efficiency assessment of firewood uses as well as wood-based technologies and tackles the possibilities for creating a local wood value chain with proper drying methods and distribution. The documents are complimentary to the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) of the Covenant of Mayor (CoM).

At least one mission in the recipient country, to be agreed with the FAO team, is planned.

The activity within Eurac will be followed and coordinated by Roberto Vaccaro, a senior researcher with 14 years of working experience in the energy sector and in the development sustainable energy plans.

Activity carried out by Roberto Vaccaro in the third year

Activity 2.2.1. Coaching of Manufacturers, Retailers and teachers from vocational schools

C. Energy Efficiency and Renewable energy results analysis

In the third and in the seventh year of the project the Eurac Institute for Renewable Energy supports the monitoring efforts on EE/RE, as well as designs and accompanies an Energy efficiency and renewable energy use survey. The survey will provide on-the-ground and in-depth analysis of the achievements of the project, compared against the indicators contained in Annex 2 of the project documentation, and propose, if necessary, corrective actions.

The activity within Eurac will be followed and coordinated by Roberto Vaccaro, a senior researcher with 14 years of working experience in the energy sector and in the development of sustainable energy plans. He will be supported by Eurac’s centralised statistic supporting office.

Eurac will elaborate the TORs for the service provider and provide technical support to the implementation and analysis of the results.

At least one mission per year to the recipient country, to be agreed with the FAO team, is planned.

Activity carried out by Christian Hoffman in the third year

Output 3.1: By Y5, the guidelines to enhance participation and engagement of Community in sustainable and climate adaptive management of forest and related ecosystem services are adopted.

The Eurac Institute for Regional Development provides institutional and community support in applying climate adaptive forest governance guidelines including rural EE and climate change mainstreaming. Christian Hoffman, expert for forest and biomass value chain analysis, elaborates together with governing institutions and associations an applicable concept that also integrates the private sector in the value chain that provides sustainably fuelwood to Armenia’s people.

This activity includes an analysis focusing on every governance aspect of the value chain in cooperation with activities covered under component-1 and component-2. This concerns the extension of forest land, the cultivation of tree species for energy purposes, silvicultural measures, timber harvesting, collection, storage, drying and distribution/sale (logistics). Thereby it is targeted to develop governance recommendations to apply:

- A sound silvicultural and sustainable forest management for producing fuelwood at current and extended forest areas, by taking care of the spatial distribution in Armenia.

Second, storing and drying practices should be introduced for raising the energy source efficiency of fuelwood.

- Third, effort should be taken to integrate alternative biomass resources and residues into the value chain of fuelwood.

- And finally, the fair and sustainable access to fuelwood needs to be regulated and logistically solved.

To achieve this, the project activities will build on the already applied initiatives from the Armenian Government and the inclusion of private sector to professionalize the process of delivering fuelwood and to raise awareness for using it sustainably. Therefore a cooperating exchange of experts from Armenia and South Tyrol is foreseen to benefit from the lessons learned and experiences in supplying biomass energy in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, South Tyrol.

Preparatory activities:

In accordance with Component-1 and Component-2, and in alignment with the National Forest Policy and Strategy (2004 or replacing document); an overview of the general framework is obtained, namely on the key stakeholders and relevant governance documents to be amended for a more sustainable use of fuelwood.

Main governance activities:

a) Recommendations for governing sustainable forest management strategies (monitoring, forest fire control, combatting illegal harvests of wood, grazing, protection, restoring of degraded forest ecosystems and rewarding), which could also consider the planting of potential new tree species for energy purposes, as well as extending forest areas on privately owned land.

b) Guideline for capacity building on the following aspects: (i) efficient storing and drying practices implemented by the private sector and/or state agencies; and (ii) building up of a broader supply chain to deliver fuelwood more sustainably based on the principles of Public Private Partnership (PPP).

c) Sensibilization for a Cross-sectorial collaboration to introduce the principles of circular economy focusing on the reusing potential of alternative biomass residues as energy sources.

d) Roadmap to adapt logistical solutions to provide a place-based system that counteracts illegal logging and enhances a just access to dry and energy efficient fuelwood, which is affordable even for the poor and very poor rural population.

The activity within Eurac will be followed and coordinated by Christian Hoffmann.