There are three key reasons why energy efficiency project investments are challenging, said Adrian Ghiță, the Executive Director of the Romanian Fund for Energy Efficiency (FREE), during the event “Energy efficiency for energy transition” organized in Constanța by Energynomics together with the Romanian Fund for Efficiency Energy – FREE and the Directorate for Energy Efficiency within the Ministry of Energy.
“There are bottlenecks in project documentation, which is often drawn up at a poor quality level. The second barrier is related to mindset. People don’t lend themselves easily to energy efficiency on the principle ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. The third major blockage starts from the dependence on non-reimbursable funds, which are not always easy to obtain”, declared Ghiță.
At the time of FREE’s creation, energy efficiency was strictly assimilated to the concept of energy savings, but in the context of current crises it already has other connotations such as energy security or energy vulnerability.
Meanwhile, this concept has become one of the five pillars recognized by the EU for sustainable development.
FREE was established in 2001 through GD, at the initiative of the World Bank and the Global Environment Fund, which then offered the Romanian government a grant of 8 million dollars for investments dedicated to the energy efficiency sector.
Since its inception, the fund has awarded funding for 51 contracts totaling nearly 30 million dollars, and these contracts have generated an annual carbon reduction of more than 206,000 tons.
DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION OF ADRIAN GHIȚĂ
“We finance photovoltaic projects on the condition that the energy is used for consumption. We grant financing with fixed interest rates, which is an advantage in a period like this,” Ghiță also said.
FREE mainly analyzes projects that have a payback period of 6-7 years, and financing contracts are made only in dollars.
At the same time, FREE finances a maximum of 80% of a project, and the minimum amount must be at least 100,000 dollars, while the maximum threshold is 1 million dollars per project. However, these thresholds can be exceeded or reduced with the approval of the Board of Directors of FREE.
The conference in Constanța was the third of a series of 5 scheduled by the Energynomics communication platform, the Romanian Fund for Energy Efficiency – FREE and the Directorate for Energy Efficiency within the Ministry of Energy. The project is financed by Norwegian Grants 2014-2021. The next conferences are scheduled in Iași, on October 19 and 20, and in Bucharest, on November 16 and 17.