Smooth financing of energy efficient domestic appliances in Türkiye

Şekerbank and the TuREEFF consultants designed a simple approach to kick-start the financing of small investments in residential energy efficiency.

The process starts at the bank branches with project origination, application, eligibility check and screening. With all the information easily collected, the central unit at the retail banking headquarter approves the loans and the branch disburses the money either to the individual or directly to the retail shop.

To make the process even faster, the TuREEFF consultants developed a list of pre-approved high-performance technologies (Technology Selector), which is available at www.tureeff.org. The list includes more than 2,500 technologies for small investments in residential energy efficiency, which lead to energy savings and decreased energy consumption. Among others, these technologies include:

• Refrigerators, freezers or combined units with energy class A++ or higher;
• Dishwashers of energy class A++ or higher;
• Washing machines, dryers or combined units of energy class A+++ or higher;
• Energy efficient ovens;
• Air conditioning units of energy class A+ or higher.

The main market barrier for promoting the high-energy efficiency equipment is awareness of its advantages and benefits, which is still rather low in Türkiye. In response, the TuREEFF team designed a marketing campaign to disseminate the benefits of high energy efficiency equipment and its use.

Results of the approach

In the first three months of this approach, Sekerbank disbursed 233 loans for a total amount of TL481,854, leading to multiple energy savings and CO2 emission reductions of 15.1 tonnes per year in all the regions of Turkey.

This is a remarkable output for the start of the facility, forecasting excellent results in future. It is necessary to highlight, that most of the investments took place in less developed areas of Türkiye. Therefore, the approach proves to be effective and can be applied by other financial institutions and in other countries to achieve a similar success in financing and implementing small-scale sustainable energy projects.