Burkhard von Kienitz Opening Sarajevo Energy And Climate Week 2026
As prepared for delivery at the Opening Address of the 2026 Sarajevo Energy & Climate Week
Ministers, Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great honor to open Sarajevo Energy & Climate Week here in this remarkable city.
On behalf of the World Energy Council, I would like to thank the organizers,
the Chamber of Economy of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and everyone who has brought together such a impressive community of energy and climate leaders from across South-East Europe and beyond.
Our Chair, His Excellency Adnan Amin, and our Secretary General Dr Angela Wilkinson, send their warm greetings. They have asked me to represent the Council this week, which I am delighted to do in my role as Chair for Europe.
Let me start with a simple observation: Energy has never been only about energy.
- It’s about security. It’s about dependency – or sovereignty.
- It’s about jobs and competitiveness. – It’s about affordability, public confidence.
- And increasingly, it’s about our ability to work together when the world becomes less predictable.
Sarajevo, your country, and your region is where cultures, peoples, and trade have converged for centuries.
You understand the value – but also the fragility – of connections and collaboration.
You know better than others what it means to stand courageously for values and principles.
Security of critical infrastructure, security of supply, access to investment, and affordability of energy cannot be achieved by a country acting alone. Challenges don’t stop at national borders – even less than they did in the past. Rather, cooperation between different systems, markets, and infrastructures is the key to a stronger energy system.
That is why your region is important not only for your countries, but for Europe as a whole
I myself worked for three years in northeastern Romania – right on the border with Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova – where I had the opportunity to help shape the energy transition. I learned at least three things:
- Every region and every period navigates its own energy transition, and political stability is crucial in this process.
- Southeast Europe are situated at a key crossroad: Your power grids, gas pipelines, and digital systems are increasingly connecting the region both internally and to the broader European market.
- And: Southeast Europe is incredibly beautiful, diverse, and uniquely hospitable!
The World Energy Council was founded more than a century ago, in the belief that engagement across borders and sectors is essential to building better energy systems – and societies. Today we are a global, independent and impartial community, present in more than 100 countries, with a network of over 3,000 organisations.
At the heart of the Council are our national Member Committees. They bring together governments, energy companies, universities, investors, industry, civil society and the next generation of energy leaders.
Each Member Committee reflects its country’s particular energy realities, institutions and priorities. The Council’s strength comes from connecting this diversity. I have had the privilege of personally visiting 19 Member Committees across four continents. What impressed me most is not that they have found the universal answer to energy transition.
They have not! What they have developed is something more valuable: the ability to learn from different answers. In the Council, we do not declare one technology, one national model or one transition pathway to be universally right.
We begin by asking what works, under which conditions, for whom, at what cost
This is also the purpose of our World Energy Trilemma. Energy is complex – it needs a balance of 3 angles: energy security, energy equity, environmental sustainability
- A successful transition cannot permanently sacrifice one of these dimensions at the expense of the others.
Countries start with different resources, levels of development, industrial structures, geographies and social priorities. What is effective in one context may not be effective in another. Progress comes not from replicating models, but from learning, adapting and applying insights in ways that fit local realities.
This is also what the World Energy Trilemma helps make visible. It challenges leaders to look simultaneously at energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability because conditions change.
- The belief that exploiting the environment will bring competitive advantages may help in upcoming elections, but it will backfire much sooner than anyone imagines – but:
- An energy transition that expands Renewables but is unaffordable for households is not sustainable and undermines the democratic foundation
- Nor is one that protects today’s jobs but ignores tomorrow’s competitiveness.
For South East Europe, this balance is demanding, and especially important.
The region carries a significant coal and lignite legacy, which still underpins electricity supply and thousands of livelihoods. It also holds real strengths: substantial hydropower, growing solar and wind potential, strategic interconnection routes, and a deep engineering tradition.
And it faces pressure: affordability, energy poverty, and the arrival of new external rules such as the CBAM – Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
This week’s program reflects that agenda well: sustainable transition, markets, financing, digitalization, hydrogen, energy justice, security of supply, and investment.
The region already has significant assets and projects in each area. But as deployment advances, the next challenge is integration: enabling these assets to work together across infrastructure, markets and national borders as part of a connected energy system.
Trans-Balkan Electricity Corridor helps resilience when planned along national needs.
Coupling the region’s electricity markets with the European market unlocks investment when it is approached together, rather than country by country.
And critical infrastructure becomes more secure when information, standards, responsibilities and responses are coordinated.
Those, whose living standards depend on coal need pathways to new industries and jobs. And a region negotiating its integration into the European market needs opportunities and optimism.
The countries of South East Europe do not need identical energy systems or transition pathways to build solutions together. They need their different systems, markets and infrastructure to work together. Doing so can deliver reliable and affordable energy, competitive industries, secure livelihoods and greater confidence in the future.
In short, individual projects create capacity, but cooperation creates systemic value.
This week, you are also honoring energy security in the name of Emerik Blum: an engineer, builder, and a leader who understood that infrastructure is ultimately an act of trust in the future. Energoinvest, the company he founded, carried Sarajevo’s engineering out into the world. That spirit is exactly what we need today: security that is not based on isolation, but on reliable interconnection, diversified supply and trusted cooperation among neighbors.
So, what can the World Energy Council contribute?
We bring impartial, globally informed tools: our World Energy Trilemma; our annual World Energy Issues Monitor, which tracks what keeps energy leaders awake at night; and our World Energy Scenarios, which explore plausible energy futures. We stand ready to contribute these perspectives, to help connect diverse perspectives, and share experience and invite you to actively participate in our network.
I especially invite you all to take these conversations further at the 27th World Energy Congress, taking place in Riyadh April 2027 under the theme “Inspiring Transformations, Delivering Transitions.” The plurals mean: there is no single transformation or transition, and South East Europe’s experiences belong firmly in that global conversation.
This brings me back to Sarajevo: The city has always been a meeting point, shaped by connections across cultures and ideas. If this week helps enabling different systems, markets and communities to work together where it creates greater value than acting alone, and builds lasting relationships, it will have achieved a lot for Europe.
I congratulate the organisers, I wish you an open, ambitious and action-oriented week, and I look forward to what we can build together.
Thank you.