Energy efficiency presents enormous investment opportunities for businesses with significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially in developing countries. However, many development programmes targeting energy efficiency have struggled to catalyse the market, which is one of the main reasons is that energy efficiency is not a priority.
The concept of “energy efficiency” can be challenging to sell: it requires providers of technologies like air conditioning or boilers to change the way they approach businesses. Instead of merely selling new technology, a provider needs to sell a promise of future energy savings that should be high enough to justify the investment.
BASE and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) are working together to provide a Small Scale Funding Assessment (SSFA) to contribute to the construction of one alternative scenario to quickly advance Costa Rica’s market to energy efficient products in the public sector.
The objective of this project is to undertake the architecture of the revolving loan fund to develop a market for energy efficiency lighting, air conditioners and refrigerators in Costa Rica. The programme seeks to accelerate improvements in energy efficiency under public procurement programs and reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
The architecture of the energy efficiency revolving loan fund will include the assessment of the legal, financial and operational aspects of the revolving loan fund to ensure sustainability of large-scale replacement programs in the public sector and the deployment of accounting, auditing and control system to ensure transparency.
