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The idea of founding REGEA was born out of a thirst for better achievements. It was at a Brussels conference, back in November 2005. Witnessing the results achieved by European regions and cities, I thought: Why don’t we do this?!
Fortunately, Croatia soon joined the Intelligent Energy Europe program, which called for submissions for funds for establishing energy agencies. Even more important than funds was a signal sent from Brussels in March 2006 that energy agencies were a mechanism recognized and encouraged by the EU. Looking back, the story about the establishment of our Agency sounds like a big adventure now. Ambitious from the very beginning, we decided to found a joint institution for as many as four regions: City of Zagreb, Zagreb County, Karlovac County and Krapina-Zagorje County. The agency was formally established after some two years of preparations. The first years were the hardest ones – you know the feeling when your legs feel heavy in your dream and you cannot run? In the first months, we had to rent an office, furnish it, hire the staff, take care that there was always enough money in our bank account, and increase our capacities all at the same time. We learned as we went along, one day at a time.
Our first office was a rented apartment in an alley in Zagreb’s Trešnjevka district. The office apartment was at the end of a corridor on the first floor of a (predominantly) residential building and our visitors were surprised to find themselves making their way to our office through the smells of lunch, laundry, and garbage bags left in the corridor. I remember it well when the prefect of one of the Croatian counties visited us for the first time – the expression on his face said it all. After a year, we opened a somewhat more serious office in Karlovac – on the first floor of a shopping mall, in the immediate vicinity of a sex shop. Keeping the office warm in winter was impossible… Today, when our office is located in the Bračak Energy Center – a renewed manor of the noble Kulmer family near Zabok – with 20 employees working there, and when our new office in Karlovac has its own boiler room that also provides heating for the entire Chamber of Trades in Haulikova Street, we remember our first offices with a smile.
Although REGEA’s first employee was hired on 1st April 2008, we always mark 13th June as our anniversary – on that date in 2008 we held the first formal conference with our twin agency from Arc-de-Seine, France. In late 2008 there were six of us and by summer 2009 four more staff members joined us. For the sake of comparison – the initial EU funds earmarked for the purpose anticipated a total of four employees in the first three years of REGEA’s operation. Fortunately, the field demands we faced and the projects we developed required entirely different dynamics. Today we have 34 employees.
Our first project was the reconstruction of a short section of public lighting in Klanjec. To this day, I find the symbolism related to that project important: REGEA was established to provide expert support to our countries, cities, and municipalities and we are doing our best to be their best friend. Today we are working on major investment project – EUR50 million-worth reconstruction of public lighting of the City of Zagreb. Despite such “major league” EU projects, despite the glamour of European development and commercial banks, we remain firmly dedicated to our original principles, helping and consulting for the common good.
We have received numerous awards – on both European and national levels. We merely hang them on the wall and move on. It is a great feeling when you see your project completed when you see something built – something concrete, something tangible. I also take pride in the fact that we were the first ones in Croatia to launch a program of promotion of renewable sources of energy among citizens. No less than 10,000 households were included in it and we managed to organize a crowdfunding platform and successfully carry out six campaigns, gathering an overall sum of over HRK450,000.
In the meantime, the Agency’s budget has grown more than twentyfold. True, there were also some hard times in the past 10 years, but the notion that we were doing a good job always kept us moving on.
REGEA can and should keep growing, and all of us can still learn. The power industry is developing fast and major changes are coming our way. Our role here is clear – we must ensure that smart solutions are applied in Croatia and that the energy transition becomes a reality. The energy of the future is the energy available everywhere and fully or mostly renewable. The energy of the future is also low carbon energy, regardless of the challenges ahead. Never before have energy sources grown so fast. The trend is unstoppable. Our cars will be storing energy and many of us will consume and produce energy at the same time. This is where knowledge becomes crucial – the knowledge we will need if we want to be something more than just a destination of wealthy tourists. Many things are going to change in the next five years. The changes are happening at an ever-increasing rate and I can only hope that we will be up to the challenges ahead of us.
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