The shift to energy-efficient appliances is considered by the United Nations Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative as a “high-impact opportunity” that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, benefit the economy, and improve people’s well-being. In 2015, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched United for Efficiency (U4E) to support countries in transitioning to energy-efficient appliances like air conditioners, refrigerators, electric motors, and transformers.
Accelerating the market transformation to environmentally sustainable, energy-efficient appliance technologies is key to achieving the needed emission reductions to reach the global warming targets. Against this background, BASE is supporting U4E projects aiming to provide technical assistance on lighting and refrigerating solutions to the administrations of three countries: Bolivia, Brazil and Tunisia.
In 2020, U4E and the Bolivia’s Ministry of Energies and Ministry of Environment and Water started to work together, with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), on a project aiming to facilitate the shift to energy-efficient lighting technologies in the country through creating a national policy, developing a Measurement, Verification and Enforcement (MVE) system, and leveraging lighting innovation, in particular light emitting diodes (LEDs).
Proper disposal of appliances is crucial to ensure a sustainable approach and prevent pollution after use. The transition to energy-efficient lighting appliances must include an effective waste management strategy, a component of the project that BASE will support, in order to share current best practices with Bolivian officials regarding lighting equipment’s end-of-life, which can potentially contain multiple hazardous materials. This approach not only protects the environment and public health but also conserves valuable resources by optimising the recycling of parts.
It is expected that the transition of Bolivia to high-performing lighting could result in annual direct energy savings of 1.5 TWh, cost savings of over USD 160 million and a reduction of 1.1 million tonnes of CO2.
The Brazilian Ministry of Mine and Energy and U4E launched in 2021 a project that aims to assist the country’s transition to higher-performing commercial refrigeration systems, focusing on businesses such as wholesalers, retailers (it is estimated 65 percent of the energy consumed by supermarkets in Brazil comes from cooling), hotels and restaurants, where potential to reduce energy consumption is high by implementing energy efficiency standards and regulations. Indeed, if Brazil has standards in place for multiple types of appliances, it lacks minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) or energy efficiency labels for commercial refrigerators.
In that context, BASE will support the project’s international study of best practices that aims to help the implementation of MEPS, labels and endorsement stamps, to create regulations implementation recommendations and to provide training to local stakeholders.
The project is expected to result in more than 9 TWh in direct annual energy savings, over USD 1.2 billion savings in annual electricity costs and 6 million tonnes of CO2 avoided annually.
Improvement in Tunisia’s sustainable energy supply situation has been limited by restricted investment in energy resources, a decline in conventional fossil fuel energy production and a great increase in national energy demand. The energy sector is by far the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the coutnry, and the residential/building sector accounts for a significant percentage of it, with lighting standing out as one of the largest users of electricity at the household level.
The deployment of efficient lighting technologies in Tunisia remains below that of other developed countries. Among key market barriers impeding the deployment of LED lighting products, domestic stakeholders cite the regulatory framework governing tax benefits that had a significant impact on the selling prices of lamps, and the national currency which experienced a significant shift against the euro and the dollar, both leading to the inflation of the prices of imported products.
To tackle this, BASE supports U4E’s project in partnership of the National Agency for Energy Management (ANME) aiming to support Tunisia by enhancing stakeholder capacity for pursuing strategic lighting policies and regulations to the best international practices, and the promotion of energy-efficient lighting technologies among end users and local manufacturers. In particular, BASE contributes to the development and adoption of an MVE system, the benchmarking of international experiences of QR application for labelling, and creating a tailored proposal for the design, development and operation of such a tool. This verification application (software or similar) will contribute to informing the consumers and the lamp & luminaire suppliers on energy certification of the product and support the regulatory authorities in verifying the information on the energy label.
Also BASE will provide guidance and related training on financing recommendations for the lighting product manufacturers/assemblers based in Tunisia to support their investment in transforming their product lines to modern eco-efficient lighting production. Financial mechanisms alternatives to face the potential expenses of the technical proposals to transition to LED manufacturing/ product quality upgrade will be suggested to support local manufacturers’ upgrade plans on transitioning from incandescent lamp and CFL manufacturing to the production of LED lamps and improving quality products for LED manufacturers.
Thanks to the new regulatory framework, the savings in final electrical energy could be around 86 GWh in 2030 and 142 GWh/year in 2040 according to UNEP (2019), representing cumulative savings reaching 1.6 TWh over the period 2017-2040.
