Cooperation between EU Clima-Med and CEDRO V projects in Lebanon
The EU-funded Clima-Med project, and EU-funded UNDP Country Entrepreneurship for Distributed Renewables Opportunities (CEDRO 5) project in Lebanon, have teamed up to implement pilot municipal projects as demonstration actions to replicate. The actions were selected from among those prescribed in the Sustainable Energy Access & Climate Action Plans (SEACAPs) prepared by the following municipalities: Baakline, Kab Elias, Batloun, Bishmizzine and Union of Dannieh with support from the Clima-Med project. They include long-term energy production and consumption measures and patterns, and cover municipal, residential and commercial buildings, urban transport, waste, local green electricity production as well as adaptation actions related to the impacts of climate change.
Some of these actions will be directly funded by the EU through the UNDP CEDRO 5, while others will be funded through a Crowdfunding Platform/Mechanism, as “pilot initiatives that can be replicated and scaled”. In order to facilitate the replication, funding guidelines will be available to explain the finance models applied in those municipality projects. They will be in line with the recommendations of the Climate Finance Strategy document, which is being prepared by Clima-Med for each affiliated country.
During the implementation, both projects’ teams have worked closely together alongside municipalities, starting by selecting the first five actions into developing their necessary technical and financial feasibility studies, first of which are actions to reshape and rehabilitate municipal buildings with regards to their energy efficiency. More specifically, the projects will install small-scale photovoltaic power plants in public facilities.
The projects are also providing trainings to municipality technicians on energy efficiency and financial management in project implementation.
The importance of these projects is to allow the local authorities to lead by example through the use of renewable energy in public buildings and help in popularizing the concept of using renewable energy in municipal and private buildings.
Clima-Med and UNDP CEDRO 5 will provide further technical assistance and partial grant funding to the targeted municipalities to select and implement 10 additional pilot sustainable energy interventions.
The overall objective of the EU funded Clima-MED project is to enhance energy security and adaptive capacity of partner countries while fostering their transition to low carbon and climate-resilient economies, thereby contributing to more stable, efficient, competitive and climate-resilient socioeconomic contexts. It focuses on: Supporting sustainable energy policies and strategies both at national and local levels; Providing technical assistance to support the formulation and implementation of local Sustainable Energy Access and Climate Action Plan (SEACAPs), help enable beneficiaries to better access finance mechanisms leading to defining concrete actions implemented by local authorities in the Southern Neighbourhood.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has initiated the implementation of the CEDRO 5 project, funded by the European Union. The CEDRO 5 project is implemented in partnership with the Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI), The Lebanon Green Building Council (LGBC), and the International Renewable Energy Credits (I-REC) Institution. CEDRO 5 aims to enhance innovation, entrepreneurship and research, assist in technology transfer and the creation of new value chains in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sector, and support enabling policies, trainings and capacity building.
photo: Christelle Hayek