Moldovan second largest city's thermal energy system to get 3 million euros for modernisation

Chisinau, 1 April /MOLDPRES/ - The Regional Account of the Eastern Europe Energy Efficiency and Environmental Partnership (E5P) will provide non-refundable financing worth three million euros for the modernisation of the thermal energy system of the Balti municipality. The grant agreement was signed in Chisinau today.   

The agreement is trilateral, between the Economics Ministry, thermal electric power station Nord (CET Nord) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which manages the aforementioned Account and amends the agreement on financing between Moldova and EBRD. This accord was ratified in 2015 and provides for funding the same project, based on a credit worth seven million euros. The non-refunding financing completes the loan amounting to seven million euros, provided by EBRD in 2014 to the state enterprise CET-Nord stock company, which supplies thermal energy to 75 per cent of the Balti city residents, as well as to a large number of public and commercial buildings.  

According to Deputy Prime Minister, Economics Minister Octavian Calmic, the signing of the agreement and, respectively, the implementation of this project on modernising the Balti thermal energy system, is aimed at improving the quality and reliability of the work of the system of thermal energy supply to consumers of the Balti municipality at an accessible tariff.     

EBRD Deputy Director for Municipal and Environmental Infrastructure, Lin O'Grady said that more than 100,000 people would enjoy more comfortable winters due to investments in optimizing the Balti-based thermal energy provision system. “With the help of the E5P grant, CET-Nord S.A. will be able to modernize the equipment, in order to provide services more efficiently. This will help save a considerable quantity of energy, which will lead to low tariffs in the long run,” the EBRD official said.  

“The project signed today is just the first of many other ones, in the context of E5P Account. More than 28 million euros will be earmarked to Moldova, of which 18 are provided by the European Union,” the head of the operations department at the EU Delegation in Moldova, Aneil Singh, said.  

The project, amounting to ten million euros in all, provides for setting three gas engines with a capacity of 4.4 MW each for a simultaneous generation of thermal and electric energy, replacing network pumps and setting frequency converters at pumping installations, reorganization of the thermal electric power station working on coal into a station working on bio-fuel, setting 170 individual thermal points in apartment blocks, etc.   

The modernisation of the Balti-based thermal energy supply system is the first project of Moldova, which benefits from the financing of the E5P account, to which Moldova acceded in 2015.  

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor A. Raileanu)