Just Transition Forum unites regional leaders in Tbilisi to tackle energy poverty and shape fair energy future

On 27 November, governments, partners, civil society and community leaders from across Europe gathered in Tbilisi for the Energy Community’s Just Transition Forum, to explore how energy efficiency can help end energy poverty and strengthen public trust in the clean-energy transition.

The Energy Community is an international organisation bringing together the European Union and nine neighbouring EU candidate or potential candidate countries, including Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, to create an integrated regional energy market based on a legally binding framework. 

At the Forum, the Energy Community Secretariat presented Just Transition Policy Guidelines, which guide governments in integrating just transition elements into energy and climate planning – their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs). The guidelines help ensure that decarbonisation goes hand in hand with social protection, local opportunity, and public trust, while supporting alignment with the European Union’s clean energy and climate objectives. 

“With just transition principles at the core, National Energy and Climate Plans can pave the way towards EU energy market integration and turn the green transition into an engine of investment, inclusion, and shared prosperity,” said Artur Lorkowski, Director of the Energy Community Secretariat, opening the Forum.

“For the European Union, a Just Transition is not only an environmental goal,  it is a commitment to people, fairness and long-term resilience. This transformation must be built through dialogue, transparency and the active participation of communities,” Head of the EU Delegation to Georgia Paweł Herczyński said.  

Forum participants also discussed the findings of the Secretariat’s study ‘Energy Efficiency First for Energy Poverty’. It shows that 30-40% of households in Georgia, Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia face energy poverty, and demonstrates how targeted investments in energy efficiency can transform people’s lives across the region by making homes warmer, healthier and more affordable to run. By prioritising vulnerable households, creating renovation funds and applying the ‘energy efficiency first’ principle, the contracting parties could reduce household energy demand by more than 60%, create up to 19 local jobs for every million euros invested, and triple the wider benefits through improved well-being, comfort and productivity.

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Press release