City of Križevci

The City of Križevci has set itself the goal to become energy efficient by 2030. Therefore, Križevci is making energy recovery of the public buildings. It also uses biomass as heating source. Meanwhile, the city is exploring the potential of geothermal energy sources.

Giving the necessary energy to the climate transition

In fact, the municipality wants to use locally-available energy sources for the inhabitants’ consumption – notably heating – but also to encourage citizens to adopt ecofriendly behaviours. And to limit the use of motorized mobilities, Križevci instaured electric vehicles charging stations, as the city administration’s hybrid vehicles. It also plans to install public electric bikes and develop the cycling tourism through the city.

Empowering people: The key for a transition supported by all

In addition, the city co-financed, in cooperation with citizens, solar power plants on private households’ and on some municipal buildings’roofs. The city benefitted from  the first crowd-lending and citizen energy project in Croatia: the Križevci Solar Roofs project.

This project was financed through a crowd-lending campaing based on micro-loans model. Citizens could invest from 1,000.00 kuna (130 euros) to 10,000.00 kuna (1,300 euros) with a 4.5% interest rate. The interests are calculated over 10 years, from the electricity production’s income of the solar power plant on the roof.

As a result, 53 small investors gathered the necessary amount of 23,.000 kuna (30,000 euros) in only 10 days. Therefore, Križevci was able to build a 30 kW solar power plant on the roof of the development center and the technology park, and another one on the building of the public library.

In the view of making information about energy renewable sources easy to access to anyone, Križevci opened an energy-climate office in the city centre.

Sources: Dijana Marković, Adviser for Public Relations and protocol for the City of Križevci; report from the official website of the European Geothermal Congress; website of the H2020 European project ‘COMPILE’; news article from the Croatian tourist news portal hrturizamm.fr; news article from the European project ‘ManagEnergy’ website;