Sectors
Five markets we know from both sides.
Topics
Five questions that cut across every market.
Services
Economic analysis for governments, donors and international organisations: we diagnose sectors and public spending, design and cost programmes, and evaluate what they changed.Economic analysis for companies and investors: we size markets and plan entry, find and assess firms to buy, and model what a business is worth.
Topic
Evidence
A green transition starts with two questions: how clean the power is, and how carefully it is used. More than three fifths of the electricity Serbia generates comes from coal; in the EU, one tenth. Fewer than one manufacturer in five uses digital systems to cut its energy use; in the EU, three in ten.
Makeselectricity generated from coal, of every 100 kWh, 2024Serbia 62EU 10WB6 55
Savesmanufacturers using ICT to cut their energy use, of every 100, 2025Serbia 18EU 30
Eurostat, energy balances (2024) and ICT use in enterprises (2025); WB6 summed over the six economies
Context
For governments, regulators and donorsFor companies and investors
Serbia’s power still comes mostly from coal, and the price of carbon reaches its firms from outside and from within: through the EU’s carbon border adjustment, through buyers who ask their suppliers for emissions data, and through Serbia’s own carbon tax. It reaches them faster than most firms can see and cut their energy use and emissions. The digital tools that make savings measurable are cheap and well known, yet few firms use them, and support for digitalisation and for energy efficiency runs on separate tracks.
Policy has paid mainly for supply: regulated tariffs that keep household power cheap, auctions for new renewables, and a power system built on coal. Demand has had less: few programmes help firms measure and cut their energy use, and small firms rarely know of those that exist. Carbon revenues create a choice: they can be spent so that firms measure and cut rather than simply pay, and so that small firms and coal regions are not left behind. The question for policy is how to turn the cost of carbon into a transition that is better and more widely shared.
We wrote the OECD’s chapters on how the region’s small firms digitalise and reduce their environmental footprint, built on what the firms themselves report, and have worked with the OECD on the region’s electricity and digital connections.
Two markets are opening. On the supply side: wind, solar, storage and the flexibility to balance them, as the power system integrates with Europe’s. On the demand side: metering, energy management and carbon accounting for firms that sell to EU buyers or carry heavy power bills, as the cost of carbon reaches them. Buyers pay with access rather than premiums, so verified data is what qualifies a supplier. Small firms buy this expertise rather than build it, which favours providers that bundle measurement, finance and installation and reach firms through their buyers and their banks.
We know where the region’s small firms stand on energy, carbon and digital tools from the OECD survey whose chapters we wrote, and follow the power market’s rules and players through OECD work on interconnection.
Direction
What we do here
Examples of our work
Responses from small and medium-sized firms in the six Western Balkan economies, on digital tools, greening measures and environmental tracking among other things, cross-tabulated by size, sector, age and export intensity, with a dashboard for the OECD team.
Local expertise for the OECD team: mapping the institutions that decide on energy and digital networks, convening them in Belgrade and Skopje, and reviewing the country diagnostics.
Review of the fifteen draft chapters of the policy assessment for Serbia, from investment and competition to agriculture and the environment, against evidence from institutions and from the people the policies reach.
What we do here
Examples of our work
Responses from small and medium-sized firms in the six Western Balkan economies, on digital tools, greening measures and environmental tracking among other things, cross-tabulated by size, sector, age and export intensity, with a dashboard for the OECD team.
Local expertise for the OECD team: mapping the institutions that decide on energy and digital networks, convening them in Belgrade and Skopje, and reviewing the country diagnostics.
Review of the fifteen draft chapters of the policy assessment for Serbia, from investment and competition to agriculture and the environment, against evidence from institutions and from the people the policies reach.
Earlier experience
Before Econominess, Nemanja Šormaz worked on what the European green agenda asks of Serbian firms, and on who gains and who loses from the transition.
Models of what a circular economy would mean for value added and jobs in food waste, electronic waste and plastic packaging, as groundwork for a national strategy.
What a transition of the coal sector means for output, jobs and trade, nationally and in the places that depend on it, traced through input-output and local income models under different closure paths.
A diagnostic of industry’s readiness for the European Green Deal, run as a pilot for the region: rules and incentives compared with the EU’s circular economy agenda, gaps ranked by the risk they pose to exports, and the food chain set against the Farm to Fork strategy. It was followed by guides for small firms on green finance and EU supply-chain rules, regional workshops and a summer school on the green and digital transition.
The other side
Where clean power and carbon data open a market, and who can serve it.How carbon revenue and support could help firms measure and cut, not only pay.
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Company profile, PDF · Belgrade, Serbia