Ing. Rostislav Díža, MBA is a graduate of the Faculty of Economics at VŠB-TU Ostrava. He has been working in the energy industry for more than 25 years, mainly in sales, restructuring and business development. He held various managerial positions in the ČEZ Group, including a ten-year contract in the management of the Group’s foreign acquisitions. Since 2021, he has been the Director of ČEZ Energetické služby, s.r.o., part of the ČEZ ESCO Group.
Your company provides comprehensive energy services. What do you mean by comprehensive, and can you also reduce energy consumption?
ČEZ Energetické služby has several strengths that we pride ourselves on. Firstly, we have a long tradition in the energy industry, and we have an experienced team of people. So, the answer to your question is simple. We take a truly comprehensive approach to our customers’ energy operations, assess the current state of the customer’s operation, develop a proposal for savings solutions, and prepare technical and economic studies as well as feasibility studies. We then build the turnkey project, including the design–build project and processing the necessary permits. We do not have to sell one particular product to the customer. Our goal is to off er them the best and most effi cient solution we are looking for within our entire group.
Within the scope of energy management, we provide supplies of thermal energy, drinking water, service water, compressed air, wastewater disposal and treatment, and electricity and natural gas distribution in the operated local distribution systems.
Industry managers today have to make quick decisions about setting up energy management for the future. What
services can you offer them?
It is in cooperation with the aforementioned sister companies that we offer a comprehensive solution. The manager of a company that produces beverages or prints books should not be concerned with the energy management of his or her operation. He or she should leave these things to the experts, because otherwise they will never turn out well. In addition to building, renovating and operating energy facilities, we have our own licensed water laboratory. We provide our services to a number of commercial sector entities and large engineering companies. Similarly, we also work with some municipalities or, for example, large retirement homes and other energy-intensive operations.
Foto: Jiří Janošec
You do not operate only in the Moravian-Silesian region, which is undergoing an energy transformation. Are you part of this process?
The global pressure to reduce emissions is already being addressed, and not only by large industrial companies, which have to find ways to make their operations more environmentally friendly in order to meet their emission quotas. I think that our region, which used to focus almost exclusively on industrial production, can now help the whole country in relation to the energy transition. I can see this in the example of our company, which started as a regional energy company. Still, thanks to our experience and skilled people, the company’s scope has signifi cantly expanded; for example, we modernise and operate public lighting, substations and other energy equipment all over the country.
The energy sector cannot do without innovation and smart solutions. Where can we see your smart projects?
In fact, every one of our recent projects is smart. Nowadays, you cannot do anything the old-fashioned way, i.e. replace things piece by piece, part for part. Logically, customers want us to provide economical, cost-eff ective solutions, but, at the same time, bring a qualitative shift.
I can, of course, list some examples. One such would be the modernisation of the compressor plant that we carried out in an ironworks and is now bringing signifi cant savings to the company. It is also a benefit for the environment around the Beskydy Mountains, thanks to the reduction in energy consumption in the whole region. Another refurbishment of an old coal-fi red power plant with excess capacity to a decentralised solution brought the engineering company a 50% energy saving in addition to reducing SOx, NOx and particulate emissions.
Your projects are applied in municipalities, cities and regions. This is where the citizens probably notice them most when they can see at night. What is the “Public Lighting for a Crown” project?
Simply put, it is a complete modernisation of public lighting, with the municipality not having to spend a single crown from its investment budget. Actually, one crown precisely, but according to the accounting rules, this is no longer an investment…
In practice, this means that municipalities do not buy the luminaires but rent them, and this rental is paid for from the savings that will be made by replacing the old, expensive system with a new, modern and efficient one. We provide the operation and servicing of the lamps for ten years, after which they pass into the ownership of the municipality.
For example, in Staré Křečany in the Šluknov region, we replaced the original sodium sources with modern LED luminaires, and the municipality saved 80% of its energy costs. In this service, we are preparing to launch a new service called Načti.cz, which is used to easily report faults using QR codes placed directly on, for example, lamp posts. The service will also off er the possibility of displaying information about monuments and signifi cant structures. The QR code can also link to information on municipal or private websites.
Thank you for the interview.
