Moldova, a small, landlocked country in eastern Europe, imports three-quarters of its energy and has seen its energy prices rise by more than half in the past five years.

But that could soon change, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which this year will launch an innovative effort to power a Moldovan university with cryptocurrency-funded solar energy.

The initiative with Sun Exchange, a South African solar power marketplace, will allow people to buy solar cells using SolarCoin, a cryptocurrency launched by blockchain start-up ElectriCChain, and then lease them to the Technical University of Moldova, one of the country’s largest universities, according to Reuters.

Buyers also can pay for the solar cells using euros or bitcoin, Sun Exchange officials said.

The idea is to find new sources of finance to “help buildings go green overnight” – in this instance with rooftop solar panels, said Dumitru Vasilescu, a programme manager with UNDP in Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries.

“One of the biggest obstacles to countries investing in renewable energy is a lack of finance, as you often have to wait 10 to 15 years before you get a return on your investment,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But the university will get a full 1 megawatt of energy installed in the summer, he said, as a result of the crowd-funding effort.

Owners of the solar cells, in turn, will receive SolarCoins as soon as the university produces energy, earning interest of about 4 percent on their investment, Vasilescu added.

Moldova currently has over 10,000 square metres of unused rooftop space on public buildings that could be potentially used for such efforts, he said.