Finance Mechanisms for Energy Efficiency Building Retrofits in Building Efficiency Accelerator (BEA) Partners Cities

The Clean Energy Solutions Center (CESC) initiative is a partner of the Building Efficiency Accelerator (BEA), a public-private collaboration that works toward accelerating the development and implementation of building efficiency policies and practices. As a partner in the collaboration, the CESC provides technical assistance to governments, including local governments, in policy and finance best practices and measures. The CESC was asked to provide pre-investment finance advice and planning to five BEA partner cities on how to be prepared with the right policies and finance instruments to mobilize investments in pilot projects and larger building efficiency project pipelines.   The CESC therefore tasked Econoler with providing technical assistance to five BEA partner cities: Mexico City, Mexico; Rajkot, India; Accra, Ghana; Belgrade, Serbia; and Gabrovo, Bulgaria. The purpose was to build the capacity of stakeholders to understand finance options for building efficiency projects available in their specific markets.  

To fulfil this mandate, Econoler carried out a number of tasks:

• Conducted research and scoping calls or meetings with representatives from each BEA partner city;
• Identified and reported on which relevant financing mechanisms to building retrofits have been used within their respective country and for what purposes;
• Identified and reported on what programs or projects in each country have demonstrated the use of one or more of the financing mechanisms and identified how they are relevant to specific projects;
• Identified and reported on which finance mechanisms are feasible and the most practical for the contexts of different projects while factoring in the size and technical focus of projects, as well as identifying borrowers and other relevant factors.

  Finally, Econoler helped the five BEA partner cities better understand the available financing options in their respective markets and how to financially structure their pilot projects to make them economically viable and sustainable. Different financing mechanisms including specialized EE funds, the ESCO model, dedicated credit lines and others were reviewed and analyzed to ensure that each partner city had a proposed solution that best fits their needs and the specific requirements of the relevant pilot projects.