In view of the current situation behind the eastern border, the mayor of Sejny, Arkadiusz Nowalski, is intensifying activities related to providing local energy security to the town's residents and entrepreneurs. On Friday, February 25, the city of Sejny signed a letter of intent with three partners concerning cooperation in this field.
- Today, local energy security becomes one of the most important challenges, especially for the city of Sejny located in a special region of Poland. We do not want to wait passively, but to the extent of our self-government possibilities, actively undertake local actions. Their acceleration is directly related to the international situation and the strategic location of our city in the vicinity of the Suwalski Isthmus which, on the one hand, connects the Baltic States with Poland and the rest of NATO and, on the other hand, separates Belarus from the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast - emphasizes Sejny Mayor Arkadiusz Nowalski.
A document on cooperation on the creation of its own energy storage facilities was already signed by the City of Sejny with the Polish green energy company Hynfra in December 2021. On Friday, a day after the start of Russian aggression against Ukraine, an annex was created to the document, which adds more entities to it - the Coop Tech cooperative and the Natu company. The cooperation is to include the possibility of creating and launching their own local energy storage facilities, which will strengthen the City of Sejny energetically and make the local community largely independent. However, as the mayor Arkadiusz Nowalski points out, it is to be only one of the elements of the planned local energy market and dynamic steps on the multidimensional road to energy self-sufficiency of Sejny.
The signatories of the letter of intent will also look for new areas of energy and fuel transformation of Sejny as well as decarbonization and the potential of renewable energy sources. The document also mentions the creation of conditions for the development of green energy technologies for the needs of municipal heating, local public transport and electricity supply.
- Thanks to that we will increase the resistance of the City of Sejny to possible crises: stoppage of energy supplies, lack of access to fuels or coal for heating needs and their growing prices. Residents will have a chance for cheaper and clean energy, heat and fuel for transport - notes Tomoho Umeda, chairman of the Hydrogen Technology Committee of the National Chamber of Commerce, member of the board of the association Hydrogen Poland and also president of the company Hynfra.
Umeda points out that signing such a document in the current situation is a local event which acquires global significance. - For 20 years we have been transferring 50 billion PLN a year for the import of coal, gas and oil. Most of this amount goes to the Russian regime. And what it is spent on, we can clearly see today in Ukraine - emphasizes Jan Zygmuntowski, an economist from Kozminski University and the director of CoopTech Hub, the first cooperative technology center in Poland.
- That's why we are undertaking a pioneering "energy from scratch" initiative as part of an ongoing comprehensive program of economic and social revitalization of the City of Sejny, including through the creation of modern, green and digital cooperatives. Shared ownership and responsibility works especially well in the "testing hour", and in the long run builds social capital and a culture of trust - points out Zygmuntowski. CoopTech Hub is responsible for supporting the City of Sejny in developing an economic "Sejny model" and carrying out a cooperative transformation and revitalization process extended with innovative elements.
- For the sake of our residents and businesses, we want to be prepared for all eventualities regarding the collective energy security of the entire City of Sejny. We are aware of the fact that creating local energy is an extremely ambitious and complex challenge, however in difficult times we bet on brave and perspective decisions with the present and future generations in mind - concludes Mayor Arkadiusz Nowalski.
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