World Environment Day marks successful rollout of framework to improve energy efficiency
June 5th, 2019. –World Environment Day today is the perfect occasion to reiterate the urgent need to combat climate change and highlight successful examples. The EBRD Green Economy Financing Facility in the Western Balkans (WB GEFF) works towards the goal to protect the environment through a better and more efficient use of energy. To date, the €8 million of investments have been provided for individual projects that contributed to saving over 7 million kWh of energy and over 2,5 million kg of CO2 emissions per year.
The theme of this year’s World Environment Day is air pollution. Here WB GEFF is really making a difference: The savings are equivalent to the energy consumption for heating of over 500 households or 1.600 cars removed from the streets every year.
Ninety-two per cent of people worldwide do not breathe clean air and air pollution hits countries in the Balkans region especially hard. World Environment Day 2019 urges businesses, communities and individuals to come together to explore renewable energy and green technologies that can improve air quality across the world.
The EBRD works by engaging the local community. Through local partner financial institutions the facility provides funds for investments into highly-efficient energy technologies for the residential sector with an EU incentive of up to 20%. Incentives are available once a client selects their technology from the Technology Selector [add link], buys their technology and the EBRD verifies the investment.
Every household can contribute by consuming energy more efficiently. This in turn helps reduce air pollution. By using energy-efficient solutions such as modern windows and doors, heating/cooling systems and systems used for insulation, households can significantly reduce their carbon footprint while at the same time achieve significant savings.
Although WB GEFF has been in operation for only one and half years, the programme has already reached almost 1.500 families in the Western Balkans, demonstrating the strong demand for green lending.
In the effort to make information on energy efficiency technologies easily available to homeowners, the facility successfully utilised the EBRD’s innovative, user-friendly Technology Selector. This online platform lists over 18.000 highly energy efficient products pre-approved for financing from 13 categories, offered by almost 4.500 vendors throughout the Western Balkans and growing every month.
As WB GEFF is the first EBRD energy efficiency programme dedicated to households in the Western Balkans, these positive results are an important milestone to be marked on World Environment Day.
EBRD GEFF was made possible with the support of the European Union (EU), the Austrian Ministry of Finance (BMF) and the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF), in cooperation with the Energy Community Secretariat (ECS).
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