Resalta signs public-private partnership with the Sremska Mitrovica Penitentiary in Serbia

Ankica Barbulov, director of Resalta d.o.o., with Aleksandar Alimpić, warden of the Sremska Mitrovica Penitentiary

The penitentiary was built at the behest of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph in the period from 1895 to 1899. It has been in continuous use since then, belonging to Serbia’s criminal justice system since the end of World War I. The capacity of the facility is designed to house 1,150 convicted persons, with an average number of 1,280 convicted persons and 65 detainees in the investigative unit.

The project involves the contractual supply of thermal energy and the renovation of existing systems for its production, in order to ensure a safer and more economical supply of thermal energy to the prison for heating and hot water preparation. As a private partner, Resalta will build a new biomass boiler room and associated storage, with two biomass boilers with a total capacity of 2 x 1.5 MW. As the waste from the production of euro pallets by the penitentiary will be used for wood chip biomass, the project will be self-sustaining. This will reduce annual CO2 emissions by 1,400 tons, while the financial savings on the production of heat during the contractual period for the public partner will be 7% and will reach up to 72% at the end of the contract.

The boiler room will supply 25 buildings within the Penitentiary with thermal energy and provide heat for the preparation of hot water for the needs of 14 buildings, among which are the main pavilions of the prison. The new boiler room will provide not only a more stable energy supply to the public partner, but will replace the non-environmentally friendly, expensive and soon-to-be-prohibited crude oil with a renewable energy source (wood chips), and significantly reduce CO2 emissions.

The duration of the public contract is 15 years, during which the obligations of the private partner are the preparation of the entire project documentation, obtaining all necessary permits in cooperation with the public partner, implementation and financing of all proposed measures of energy efficiency, obtaining permanent usage permits, procurement of the required amount of fuel (biomass), maintenance of the newly designed heat production system, insurance of mechanical and electrical equipment, proper management of the parameters of heat production and reporting to the public partner, and monthly measurements of the delivered quantity of heat.

Public-private partnerships enable cities, municipalities and state institutions to improve energy efficiency through partnerships with private companies through the implementation of various  measures. The private partner finances the whole project, and the public partner pays the investment out of the savings achieved during the contract, during which the private partner provides management and maintenance services. The public partner has zero costs for these projects and immediately benefits from the savings.

Resalta has implemented some of the first public-private partnerships in the field of energy efficiency in Serbia, including lighting in the cities of Krusevac, Petrovac na Mlavi, as well as the first PPP for the supply of heat to four elementary schools in the city of Pirot and the project for the supply of heat to the Gornja Toponica special hospital. Resalta is also part of a consortium that has realized the energy retrofit of 49 buildings in the city of Ljubljana, the largest such project in Southeastern Europe, and is currently working on a second energy retrofit of Ljubljana.