This report is a product of the collaborative efforts of many people and institutions, whose contributions are gratefully acknowledged.
Nelly Petkova (OECD, Environment Directorate) managed the project and contributed to the writing of the report. The report was drafted by Daniel Fjærtoft and Yuliia Oharenko (Sigra Group). A team of national experts collected the underlying data and information for the country-level analysis. The group of experts included: Tigran Sekoyan (Armenia), Ahmad Alili (Azerbaijan), Andrei Malochka (Belarus), Giorgi Mukhigulishvili (Georgia), Mihai Roscovan (Moldova) and Yuliia Oharenko (Ukraine).
A number of European Union’s Eastern Partner (EaP) government officials and consultants provided valuable suggestions, inputs and comments on the draft report. These included: Artur Aleksanyan and Vladimir Aseyan of the Ministry of Finance of Armenia; Ali Hasanli and Nurlana Guliyeva of the Ministry of Economy of Azerbaijan; the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Energy and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of Belarus; Nino Tkhilava and Venera Metreveli of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia; Mariana Botezatu, Consultant from Moldova. From Ukraine, we received valuable feedback from Volodymyr Tkachuk (National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission), Maryna Liudvenko (Ministry of Social Policy), Ivan Humeniuk (State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving), Oleksii Voloshyn and Oleksandr Melnychenko (Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine), Borys Dodonov (Consultant).
Many OECD experts were involved at different stages of the project’s implementation. Special thanks go to Mark Mateo, responsible for maintaining the OECD Fossil-Fuel Support Database, for his guidance on data collection and estimation and for his thoughtful observations on the draft. Jonas Teusch of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, Talya Vatman of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Angela Bularga of the European Commission also provided insightful comments and advice.
The authors would also like to thank Kumi Kitamori, Krzysztof Michalak, David Simek, Isabella Neuweg and Guy Halpern of the OECD Environment Directorate for their review and helpful comments on different versions of the report. Jonathan Wright provided overall administrative support for this work, as well as prepared the report for typesetting. Maria Dubois helped with preparing the report for publication, while Natalia Chumachenko translated the report into Russian. Mark Foss helped with editing the English version of the report.
Financial support from the European Union and Germany was vital for implementation of the project.