During the last years the costs for fossil energy resources are heavily increasing. Even though the prices for these resources will not be rising to ever new peaks it is obvious that they will remain on a high level and in medium and long term rise continuously. Consequently, the costs for public services, such as transportation or the provision of heat and electricity, are rising as well. This situation is creating the necessity to explore alternative energy sources, especially regenerative energies. With this a real alternative for the exploitation of so far not profitable fossil energy sources can be generated. Another approach to absorb rising costs is to critically question the status quo of energy consumption in order to be able to use existing energy saving potentials and find new ways for energy saving. Rising energy costs are contributing to a steadily increasing financial pressure for public utilities. These are the initial thoughts behind the PEA project. The PEA partnership is made up of 21 partners from 6 BSR countries. There are 11 public authorities involved as well as 7 research institutions and 3 mainstreaming partners. This provides the background for applying the triple helix approach of cooperation, which is designed to gather and share knowledge and expertise from different horizontal and vertical levels. Main aim of the PEA project is to foster regional development through energy related improvement of added value chains. The field of energy is communicated as a motor for sustainable development of the regions. Regional profiles will be worked out that positively affect the economic situation of the regions. This includes reflecting on the value added chains and a holistic consideration of the regions. For some of the partners this will lead to establishing energy self-sufficient regions. New solutions are already far developed; the aim of PEA is to collect, exchange and translate these findings and to make them usable for regions all over the BSR. This will also be fostered by new training modules for energy related staff (e.g. facility manager) and other users and decision makers, enabling them to implement and further develop strategies and measures. All actions will be continuously evaluated, thus ensuring a high level of quality of results and outputs. Main outputs will be the Regional Energy Strategies and their actual implementation, the Energy Awareness Tour and Exhibition that will ensure awareness on the important topics of renewable energy and its efficient use, the Baltic Energy Compendium that will be a comprehensive guide to rethinking and remodelling regional energy politics, the Baltic Energy Declaration that commits the participating regions and organisation to further cooperation in the Baltic Energy Council that will continue the work started with PEA well beyond the project lifetime all together resulting in more attractive and competitive partner cities and well approved experiences for the BSR. Achievements: The PEA project has been successfully completed. In a first phase of the project the project partnership has developed a kit of templates to carry out a stocktaking of energy consumption and energy supply in nine participating regions and municipalities. In a second step the collected data and produced baseline papers have been used as a platform for the development of regional and local energy strategies. The methodology to set up these energy strategies has been developed by the project partnership again. Regional and local Energy Action Plans formed the third step and have been agreed as base for practical action to be carried out in future regional and local development. The templates and guidelines form a transferable PEA- approach for other locations not involved in the project. The Baseline Studies, Energy Strategies and Action Plans can be regarded as Case Studies and can together with the methodology found in the Baltic Energy Compendium which can be found on the PEA Project Website. In five locations pilot projects have been carried out and evaluated. In Kraslava (LV) a pilot implementation with energy efficiency measures in a complete local and regional context with CO2 locking locally produced hemp fibre has been carried out. The pilot project demonstrated not only the advantage of this innovative material but also the potential benefit the local economy by using the developed insulation technology. Partners in Lithuania installed solar collectors to produce hot water and/or heating energy. Different model implementations in the regions of Ignalina and Visaginas show different effects and uses of solar energy in remote areas. In Niepolomice (PL) a conceptual design of the heat and power system for public utility building based on various renewable energy sources including hydrogen and fuel cells has been developed and installed. In Ylivieska (FI) a new type of wood chip gasifier has been developed and installed as heating means for a municipality school. Reports on pilot investments are also part of the Baltic Energy Compendium. Based on the experiences with local investments and local energy planning additional tools have been developed to facilitate local energy activities. One is a web-based tool for cost-benefit-analysis which can be accessed via the PEA project website. You can access these tools under the items Solar Energy Calculator for water heating and Online tool for assessment of sustainable energy arrangements. Other tools are the Renewable Energy Guide, a computer tool which is supposing to help local authorities both at the decision making, the planning stage of the project as well as at the stage of project validation. Further on operation models for energy innovation management have been developed, considering a total quality management (TQM) approach as well as a catalogue of sustainability and quality criteria.