Follow the money - and find sustainability

       

Further reading

• The World Bank Renewable Energy Toolkit (23)

The huge financing institutions have increasingly turned their interest towards sustainable energy, renewables and energy efficiency. The World Bank has created a "Renewable Energy Tool-Kit" and started work on doing another one for energy efficiency. They also have a project with comparative studies from Brazil, China and India, and that will be reporting soon.

Among other things they have noted that the "project delivery mechanisms" are weak and that financing is an important part of the delivery. However trivial it may seem, we are too often concentrating on technology and profitability without considering the delivery mechanisms. We may have to follow the money more closely.

The EBRD mentions energy efficiency in their policies and in contacts with NGOs. They can show a certain track record, but the applications are a bit "square" and uses rather dated views on how efficiency is achieved on the market. The concentration on ESCOs and Utilities as instruments is no doubt good, but will hardly take them all the way to a market transformation. More important, however, is that energy efficiency experts and financial experts meet and try to find a common ground for their aspirations and communication, as they did at a conference in New York recently in the "Energy Efficiency Investment Forum". There were many interesting presentations worth browsing through, such as this one by John MacLean, showing how different partners support each other in a delivery package.