The Slovenian partner organized their 1st Regional Networking event together with the 1st Regional Alliance meeting on 14th of March in their office in Ljubljana.

The event started with the short presentation of the Danube Energy+ project and emphasizing the impportance of collaboration of different partners on tranregional level and the crucial role of the Regional Alliance members in each country participating in this project. The Regional Alliance setup  was introduced to the participants.The representative of the Slovenian Transmission Network System Operator provided insights into the fast changing energy industry and the transition towards green energy. The next key note speaker representing Petrol, one of the largest Slovenian energy companies talked about the strategies to deal with the future challenges and emphasized the importance of the young innovators as key players in the energy transition towards renewable energies.The Regional Networking event closed with the lunch break and networking time.

The following event, so called Reginal Alliance meeting had a workshop character and was organized to present the pre-final Regional Mapping showing regional frameworks, supporting policy tools, young innovators' current successful ventures in energyefficiency in the region and Slovenia and regional sources of young innovators to the RA mebers. Another goal of this workshop was  to bring different RA mebers together and provide them a forum to interact, cooperate  and brainstorm on new ideas how to jointly support the project based on their different perspectives and expertise (academia, business supporting instruments , SMEs, public administartion, startups) and how to  strenthen the ecosystem.

The RA members provided their feedback on the Mapping as well as their feedback to the Code of Operation which was also presented during the workshop.The RA mebers and partner had a vivid discussion on the importance of this project as it is focusing the support and efforts to adress young innovators in the early ideation stage to enable them starting up their own business based on their innovative ideas and skills gained due to the Danube Energy+ Tool. The participants discussed the upcoming activities and events and agreed to cooperate closely in the future.