Adrian Ghiță, Executive Director of the Romanian Fund for Energy Efficiency presented the financing/credit offer of FREE and some of the projects carried out with the support of the Fund, at the conference “Investments – private funds, public funds, support schemes”, organized by Energynomics.
Established in 2001 as a public interest body, the Romanian Energy Efficiency Fund (FREE) has benefitted from a grant of eight million dollars to finance investments dedicated to energy efficiency. “We benefit from the World Bank’s expertise in the field and use transparent criteria for evaluating and selecting projects,” said Adrian Ghita. “We also use operational procedures managed and reviewed periodically by World Bank specialists.”
FREE considers beneficiaries from both the private area and public institutions, UATs. The important feature of financing from FREE is that the Fund offers “an included technical expertise, carried out mainly through its analysts, but also through the fund manager”, said Adrian Ghiță.
In 20 years of operation, FREE has been the sole financier in 47 energy efficiency investment projects, for 42 clients. “The total amount of investments contracted by FREE is 28.4 million dollars, which leveraged the turnkey implementation of investments totalling over 85 million dollars. They were mainly waste to energy projects, for the energy recovery of waste in both the industrial area and the municipal area. Another pillar of FREE investments was natural gas and oil gas cogeneration. There have also been modernizations of industrial technology processes and local heating projects, including DHCSs, and photovoltaic projects, too. For us, ESCOs are a very good partner because we promote the same principles of energy efficiency.”
DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION OF ADRIAN GHIȚĂ
Among the eligibility conditions, the most important from a technical point of view is that at least 50% of the financial benefits of the project come from energy savings. FREE mainly considers investments that recover in five, up to seven years, in small to medium projects, with values placed between 100,000 and one million dollars. “The beneficiary must have a contribution of at least 20% of the total value of the investment,” said Adrian Ghita. “I would very much like at least some of you to contact us to discuss the projects you have in mind because we believe that all together we can do much more than individually, each of us in our field.”
The conference “Investments – private funds, public funds, support schemes” was organized by Energynomics with the support of its partners: EY and BCR.