The four Lebanese municipalities participating in the SUDEP South have participated on a debriefing at the European Delegation in Beirut. The municipalities of Ardeh, Koura, Halba and Baakline were invited by the Support Mechanism to share their experiences through the implementation of their projects.

Representatives of each municipality presented the outcomes of  the projects, from the challenges to the success stories, passing by the real impacts on the beneficiaries and the replication that local authorities are trying to implement based on the lessons learned by SUDEP South.

All the present praised the exchange exercises organized by SUDEP South through field visits and Steering Committee meetings that allowed the local authorities to learn of common challenges of neighbors and discover alternative solutions applied. The sustainability of these actions was brought by many of the present stakeholders, thinking of future actions, more harmonized among the different local, national and regional actors.

SUDEP South project received the feedback from the participating municipalities, on the final stretch of this EU funded initiative. Representatives of the Lebanese institutions as the Ministry of Interior through focal point of the project, Roxane Moukarzel, used this opportunity to thank the EU for such investment. The Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation (LCEC), also present, remarked the importance of this EU project to create a ‘momentum’ on energy efficiency in Lebanon.

The SUDEP-South project began in early 2015 with 12 cities in 6 countries of the southern Mediterranean. The objective of the SUDEP Programme is to assist local authorities in responding to the sustainable energy challenges and to enable them to implement sustainable energy actions leading to energy savings, energy efficiency and more use of renewable energy sources such as solar energy.

SUDEP support mechanism activities are mainly focused on:

1.      Assistance to local authorities and reinforcing their capacities and their partners in the implementation of the demonstration projects.

2.      Promotion for the replication of innovative actions and the visibility of the programme’s results.

3.      Creation of an enabling environment for the exchange of good practices between project beneficiaries.

4.      And finally the development of their own local strategies to ensure widespread dissemination and sustainability of their projects.