The Syrian-German Program for Sustainable Urban Development - Rehabilitation of the Old City of Damascus hosted a meeting with more than 25 institutions concerned with energy consumption. The goal was establishing an energy strategy for the old city of Damascus. Institutions represented included Damascus university, the national Atomic Energy Comission, the German technical cooperation, different NGO's and the Governorate of Damascus.

The workshop is the second on this subject after a preceding workshop took place on December 14th 2008 also by the initiative of GTZ project for the rehabilitation of Damascus Old City.
The purpose was to discuss the Draft Energy Strategy for the Old City and work on related action plans. The first step of the process was a Vision for the future Energy situation in the Old City which had yet been achieved the previous workshop.

After a short opening by the GTZ-project manager Mrs. Regina Kallmayer and Mr. Bassam Jairoudiyeh, member of the Executive Bureau of the Governorate of Damascus, the international energy expert Dr. Adrian Atkinson presented the Draft Strategy, which consisted of an overview of the actual Energy Consumption in the Old City (Energy Balance), analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the actual situation, a vision on the future dealing with energy consumption in the Old City, a list of short- and long-term measures to reduce the energy consumption, as well as suggestions for institutional arrangements.
Dr. Atkinson underlined the big relevancy of defining such a strategy as practically all countries have diminishing productions of fossil energy resources and the price of energy may therefore rise rapidly.

After the presentation, the attendants discussed the draft and agreed on the Energy Strategy for the Old City as a pilot in order to gain further experience before extending it to the entire city. This approach was justified by the special and unique situation of the Old City and the fact that its constructions are mostly made of traditional materials, which makes any construction work more expensive than anywhere else.

The group defined the goals and responsibilities for further work on the Energy Strategy and on establishing an Energy Committee involving all concerned parties (i.e. the Directorate of the Old City of Damascus, civil society organizations, private sector representatives). Action Plans for all sectors will be developed and several audits for all kinds of buildings will be conducted (hotels, restaurants and private businesses, and residence buildings are of strong interest). The audits shall be the first steps towards addressing the current problems and to begin to shift away from traditional energy consumption towards renewable resources of energy supply.