United Nations Development Programme suggests public, residential buildings energy efficiency project in Moldova

Chisinau, July 22 /MOLDPRES/ – A team of consultants from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed a project on improving energy efficiency of public and residential buildings of Moldova and will submit it to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for approval. UN and UNDP Resident Coordionator in Moldova Dafina Gherceva made statements to this effect at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister, Economics Minister Octavian Calmic on 21 July.  

The project will be implemented starting from 2017, and the budget is estimated at 30 million US dollars, with the money offered by development partners as grant.

According to the press service of the Economics Ministry, Dafina Gherceva emphasized that, among the purposes of implementing this project, there were developing of a government program on rehabilitation of buildings in terms of energy efficiency, strengthening capacities of the associations of homeowners and in order to ensure energy and money savings, use of the experience gained to extend the project to all areas of the country.  

To achieve the suggested initiative, UNDP proposes to create partnership relations with an international financial institutions, as well as with local banks.  While developing and implementing the project, the experience of the projects under implementation will be taken into account, such as ESCO Moldova, aimed at enhancing energy efficiency, increasing the degree of the state's energy security.   

Deputy Prime Minister Octavian Calmic welcomed the initiative of UNDP and noted that the issues of energy efficiency, enhancing the energy security, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases represent key objectives of national authorities in energy strategies. "To achieve the objectives set, we welcome any initiative by development partners and we are open for an as efficient as possible cooperation to carry out similar projects. An example might serve the energy and biomass projects, which are of success in Moldova," the economics minister emphasized. 

Also, the deputy prime minister said that the implementation of such a project would contribute to enforcement of the National Development Strategy Moldova 2020, which provides for reducing energy consumption through increased energy efficiency and use of renewable energy.

(Reporter A. Mardare, editor A. Raileanu)