[1][2] SDEWES Centre is dedicated to the improvement and dissemination of knowledge on methods, policies and technologies for increasing the sustainability of development by de-coupling growth from natural resources and replacing them with knowledge-based economy, taking into account its economic, environmental and social pillars.

One of the main issues of the coming decades is to improve efficiencies by integrating various life supporting systems, using waste from one, as resource in other, and in exact moment when it is beneficial to all, integrating electricity, heating, cooling, transport, water, buildings, industry, forestry and agriculture systems.

The Centre also organizes a series of international SDEWES conferences for scientists to discuss issues of sustainability of energy, water and environment system.

[3] SDEWES started as a project co-funded by CORDIS under the FP5 – INCO 2 programme[4] in 2002, when first Dubrovnik Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems was organized.

New section of SDEWES Centre, SDEWES-Skopje or Macedonian section,[6] is established in Skopje, North Macedonia, with the goal to gather professionals and scientists from broad range of disciplines, particularly located in the Southeast Europe, in order to provide scientific support for wise policy-making.

SDEWES-Skopje aims to extend the activities at regional level including the other EU candidate and potential candidate countries, as well as EU neighbourhood countries to foster regional coordination in providing feasible solutions for the common challenges and gaining synergy effects.

[8] In 2014, the first regional SEE SDEWES conference was held in Ohrid, Macedonia focused on South East Europe.

SDEWES-Skopje (Macedonian section) has also been involved in several projects, including four Horizon 2020 projects[44][45][46][47] In line with the aims of the SDEWES Center, an index is also developed to benchmark the performance of cities across aspects that are related to energy, water and environment systems.