We are very proud that our first Ukrainian employee, Kateryna joined our team. We had been helping Kateryna since the first hours of her arrival in Vienna in March, offering a place for temporary residence to help her get started in Vienna. After receiving all required permits, she joined our team as a Communication Specialist. Kateryna is from Odesa, Ukraine and arrived in Austria in early March. Kateryna's story is a vivid example of how we have transformed our approach to helping Ukrainians. Starting from providing short-term accommodation, we soon expanded our activity to administrative and visa support. Now the Enery Support Package also includes job offers in our company and the possibility to receive a scholarship. We have so far supported almost 50 people with accommodation and admin support and have provided food in Slovakia for over 100 schoolkids.

In our efforts to enhance pollinator habitats and mitigate their overall decline, we decided to trial a bee project at our Karadzhalovo power plant in the Thracia region of Bulgaria. With some help from external bee and vegetation experts and one of our plant workers, Nedyalko Dyalkov, who happens to be a beekeeper in his spare time, our innovative team in Bulgaria has now managed to introduce various bee families at the solar park and plant a pollinator friendly garden, so our newest ‘workers’ have a clean food supply nearby. As a nice side effect, we already have produced our first honey and also our ‘first solar honey rakija’ from Karadzhalovo this year.

Humankind is currently facing two important issues related to nature degradation and global food production – lack of usable land and rapid decline of pollinators. We decided to focus our efforts on multiple land use and pollinator support. Photovoltaic power plants in some of the communities we operate in carry negative connotation as they are perceived to take up land that could otherwise be used for agriculture. To mitigate this, we try to only develop land with low agricultural rating but also started looking at various options for multipurpose land use initiatives to implement at our sites. Together with an experienced local farmer, our Czech team has now successfully executed a project where we introduced sheep to replace conventional vegetation control techniques and double the purpose of the land, we occupy at our Určice power plant in Moravia.

Enery supplied 410 LED luminaries for the streets of Karadzhalovo village. Everything from streetlight design, consoles, cables and terminals, to mounting materials and electrical connections was provided for the entire village, with the main street being illuminated before Christmas 2020. As a result, our home in the south of Bulgaria became brighter and safer.

In 2020, Enery donated 60 items of protective clothing to the N.I. Pirogov hospital in Sofia and 8,000 face masks to a number of municipalities in Bulgaria. It is ingrained in our corporate culture to look after people, especially the healtchcare professionals on the front-line taking care of us.

Enery supported the OMAMA project helping Roma children living in poverty, and empowers Roma women by helping them to find job opportunities. During 2020, our company sponsored Janka, who lives in the Roma settlement of Huncovce, Slovakia, and works with 15 children aged 0–3 years. As part of this project, Enery employees delighted the children by collecting and distributing toys.

“Why is renewable/solar energy important?” – this was the topic of the school competition organised by Enery at the Slovakian school Sekule/Moravský svätý Ján. We wanted to inspire interest among pupils aged 11-15 years and encourage them to learn more about renewable energy. Youngsters expressed their vision of green energy by drawing a picture, writing a story in English or German, or by making a video. The winner Lea Mária Ostrihoňová received a bicycle.

During the first COVID-19 wave in 2020, Enery became involved in an initiative of the Czech solar association to purchase personal protective equipment for elderly people. As a result, face masks were distributed to care homes across the Czech Republic. We value the contribution made by elderly people to our society, and as one of the most vulnerable groups, they deserve our support.

Enery has been assisting the technical university of Vienna by supporting student digitalisation grants. Reduced working hours and the cancellation of jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic have complicated students' financial situation. In these difficult times, we would like to provide financial support to students struggling with the COVID-19 situation and enable them to access education. Renewable energy can contribute to a brighter future in the same way as well-educated people.