Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody!Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. My name is Amanda Valenta I am the Deputy Division Lead here in USAID Washington's Energy Division and I'm super excited to welcome you all to this webinar. Where we will be exploring energy efficiency opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. But before we kind of dive in, just to set the stage a little bit let's just chat very quickly about why we're here talking about energy efficiency opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Right now countries in this region are working to provide accessible, affordable, and reliable energy while also navigating this very nebulous transition to net zero emissions and at the same time, these countries are already seeing and will continue to see a very rapid population growth that has big time implications for energy demand for transportation in buildings and cooling in all of these areas. So the region's population is expected to grow by 78 percent to nearly 2 billion by 2043 and with that we know that we're also going to very likely see carbon emissions rising due to all the increased economic activity et cetera. So one of the big reasons we're here—energy efficiency should truly be considered the first first fuel to meet this type of huge growing demand and today our Scaling Up Renewable Energy program, SURE. along with some very exciting experts from the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and CLASP, we'll be exploring what has worked in the past, what has worked elsewhere, some big interventions, and policy tools for implementing energy efficiency in sub-Saharan Africa. So next slide. 

Before we get into the real content, very quick housekeeping. You are being recorded. There is a QnA box down on the right. Please use it throughout. We'll try to answer your questions as they come in and we're also very hopeful that we'll have a good amount of time at the end to answer them. There's also a link going into your chat hopefully right now for this briefer that you see at the bottom of the screen this. 

This policy brief/opportunities assessment is kind of what precipitated this webinar. We took a deeper look at some of these opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa so if you want to get more information before, during or after this webinar, please go ahead and click into that brief and take a look. Okay next slide. Let's meet our part—oh sorry— our agenda, lay of the land. I will do kind of a global overview on where we're at in terms of energy efficiency and some of the tools that will set the stage for this conversation today then I will turn it over to our experts who will dive a bit deeper on the policy and planning, some technology and services deep dives, as well as what we need in order to mobilize finance n this space and before we do that let's meet these panelists. We have Stephane de la rue Du Can who is a senior program manager at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab she has more than 20 years of experience conducting innovative scientific research in the field of clean energy modeling and policy development in emerging economies. Before she joined the lab she was in Paris working with the International Energy Agency. There we also have Anna Maria Carreno, she's a Senior Director of Climate at CLASP where she oversees and expands programs to reduce emissions from appliances across more than 40 different countries. She's coming to us with over 10 years of experience in international energy efficiency, policy market research and technical analysis and then last but not least—Rodrigo Chaparro is a climate advisor at Tetra Tech he is helping organizations develop and implement cost-effective energy solutions that promote economic growth while navigating a transition to net zero emissions. This includes lots of different areas of expertise including mitigation risk instruments, innovative financing mechanisms, maximizing carbon finance in various projects. So we're really excited, he's here to talk finance with us a little bit later.Okay next slide.

 Let's set the stage a little bit further. I'm sure many of you have seen this chart already but really we're here talking about why energy efficiency for net zero and again that is because expanding our efforts in energy efficiency is just absolutely critical to reaching net zero. No matter which scenario you're looking at, any way you look at it, you have to have energy efficiency in the equation. This is again and I'll quote the International Energy Agency here, but the cleanest cheapest most reliable source of energy is what countries can avoid using while still providing full energy services for citizens. So here we're looking at some data that basically tells us right now the path that we're on to improve our current rate of energy intensity so the energy use per unit of GDP is about two percent annually but if we double that we can improve our global energy efficiency by over a third which is roughly equal to the current demand coming out of China. So again this is marking the huge opportunity in this space that we're going to dive into a little bit deeper today. Next slide. 

This of course does not come without challenges whether they are real or perceived in the energy efficiency space we hear about key barriers all the time whether it is lack of information, lack of market understanding, lack of general knowledge about the benefits and opportunities in your country on energy efficiency. There's also real technical barriers that are out there whether it's the actual equipment that we're not seeing or just the lack of capacity and staff needed to operate and implement—operate efficient technology or implement standards and things like that. Financial barriers. Again, some real some perceived barriers but there can be high upfront costs.  We've seen a lot of success in various markets in terms of bulk procurement and aggravating demand to help tackle some of those high upfront costs but again there is also a big perception of risk when it comes to getting energy efficiency going and then of course the regulatory and policy environment. You know we've seen a lot of success in terms of standards—getting them, passing them in our countries but then we hit real barriers when it comes to enforcement and having capacity in country to enforce. So all of these things we'll talk a little bit more about throughout the presentation. Next slide. 

USAID has come up with a really nice framework for how to start thinking about these challenges and tackling them. So we've got our building blocks for energy efficiency. We have a full report on this available as well at our website. Maybe somebody can put that in the chat now as well. But we've got three key categories for the building blocks: energy efficiency standards and retrofits, market priming and financing, as well as policy planning. So, on the standards and retrofits these include evaluation of market dynamics, regulatory costs and benefits, development of technical standards, and stakeholder engagement. So you'll see things like creating better equipment performance standards for refrigerators and air conditioners, creating building codes, and helping to move toward enforcing and mandating those building codes in country as well as the implementation of the ISO 5001. We've got our market priming and financing to help tackle some of those financial challenges that we'll hear more about. Figuring out how to really kick-start markets for high efficiency technologies by creating economies of scale and facilitating reductions of costs for the end consumer. Again, I mentioned we've seen this in some of our countries. India is an excellent example. They were able to do bulk procurement of LED light bulbs and drive the cost down by over 80 percent in just two years. So there are some real tools in our toolkit for helping to kick start some of these market interventions. Both procurement is one of them, incentive programs is another. Efficiency funds and other kind of innovative financial models come into play as well. And finally, policy planning. Integrating energy efficiency into these national power development plans into our integrated resource plans, into our low emission development strategies, our NDCs. All of these things are so critical. So, figuring out how to really make sure that energy efficiency is mandated and represented at that very high level send signals down the chain and outward to the market and can be hugely beneficial. So that's one of our key buckets as well. Next slide. 

So diving — taking us back from the global level back down a little bit into Sub-Saharan Africa's context. We know that Sub-Saharan Africa faces a lot of challenges in this space and they really do boil down to some of these issues on the right. The high cost of fossil fuels—again, somewhat due to disruption supply chains that were seen globally post COVID but other nuances there as well; really high unofficial official unemployment rates ranging from 10 to 30 percent of the labor force. Again we're seeing that increasing energy demand as the population increases and there's also a lot of urban migration happening there as well; and then again this high potential for emissions to rise in the coming decades as the population doubles by 2050. So, on the right you're seeing some of the interventions they're going to fall right in line with the building blocks that I outlined earlier and we'll talk about energy efficiency standards and retrofits; we'll talk about market priming and financing; policy planning and implementation. We're going to do deep dives on all of these things  over the next hour and I think without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Stephane de la Rue du can to focus in on our policy and planning piece and some of the interventions that we've seen work really well there. Alright, Stephane, take it away. Thank you, Amanda. Hi everyone! So, why planning? So maybe next slide please.Alright. So while energy efficiency is mentioned in many of our arching policy document and is recognized as one of the major pillar to achieve sustainable development many countries are struggling to capture the the full opportunity for energy efficiency. For example energy efficiency is mentioned in most countries and disease however those targets are often vague and framed in terms of energy intensity meaning, primary energy a per unit of GDP without any detail on the measure to implement and the potential for different measures. So, generally what we suggest is to start with energy efficiency potential study that kind of gave the overview of what's the potential of energy efficiency in the country. It assess energy savings of different technologies and look at the penetration of different technologies in the market in the country and this also then is used to develop a policy roadmap and those policy roadmaps help to prioritize actions to achieve the Eeergy savings that are —that are identified in the energy efficiency potential studies. And so on the left here, you see an example for Mexico for the—for Mexico City, for the building sector and you see how energy efficiency and can help to reduce emission and help actually to achieve 87 percent reduction of emissions if through a different type of policy implementation. So that type of analysis is very useful to start and to look at what are the different options and and what are the savings that can be expected for each of the different type of policies. Next slide please. 

So, policymakers have to the end a full toolbox of different type of policies. And so each of the different policies generally address specific barriers that Amada presented previously. So often we recommend and we recommend energy efficiency standards in the living as a first because those type of policy address a very important market barrier which are information in many markets when there is no regulation often there is no information on the type of the energy performance of the type of products that are sold in the market. So, energy efficiencies online labeling address those type of market and help to show and give the information that is needed for the consumer to make informed process decision on the efficiency of the equipment in the market. So, they are also very important because they are generally used by other type of programs and policies like procurement and financing to identify the—more are very efficient equipment in the market and then can be then programs can be developed to target those more efficient equipment and accelerate the penetration of those type of equipment through different type of programs like procurement and incentive financing incentives. For example, thank you next slide please. 

So, here—so in in the full package of different type of policy as I mentioned we often recommend to start with energy efficiency standard limiting and then to look at different type of policy to complement and accelerate the penetration of efficient equipment and here is a slide from the IEA that kind of show the importance of those type of policy MEPS, means minimum energy performance standards and MCL is the mandatory comparative labels and so here it's the status of this type of policy globally for different products. So, you have first space cooling then refrigeration, lighting, and industrial motors and you see that across the world there is approximately you know 80 countries that have implemented MEPS for space cooling and then there is another 20 other countries are working on implementing those policies so and you see different products the scales is is lower, for example industrial motors only 60 countries approximately have implemented that type of policy. So kind of give you the importance. I think. So, what we don't see in this graph but the number of countries that have implemented that type of policies have increased a lot over the last 10-15 years and we open through our program that we can reach even more countries and have this type of policies implemented. Next slide please. 

So, while the other graphs wer showing just the number of countries implementing standard labeling and so they were just data points in one graph I think what's important also to understand is that it's just not a regulation to implement, there is a full package of different implementation aspect that needs to be in place to have a program that have that can reach the impacts that are generally  estimated in energy efficiency potential studies. So here is just a slide to kind of summarize all the different elements that needs to be in place for implementing standard and labeling. So, it's you know making sure that there is a legal framework that provides the authority different stakeholders in the countries to implement the standard and the label. Then you have to have this some type of market analysis and cost benefit analysis to kind of set the minimum energy efficiency performance standard and see what's the cost and benefit for the consumer and also the country. You develop the standard and publish them and then what's very also very important is to make sure that you have compliance in the program. So, monitor the market, verify claims, and also enforce regulation are very important to make sure there is a compliance in the regulation and then obviously thinking about complementary program as we mentioned before as it's the—and thinking about the policy package that really help achieve energy savings over the whole technologies penetration. Next slide please. 

So here is an example of implementation of standards and labeling in in South Africa and So, it's—this is a part of the assistance that was provided to the South Africa government to help them implement the first online labeling program and so what we just want to show here is that through some of the collaboration we helped them also to estimate the energy savings potential which is part of the planning. So we work with the planning unit at the Department of Energy and help them to estimate the impact of the standard labeling program and so here is just to show you the scale of the potential of this type of programs. I'm in South Africa obviously there's very emission intensive electricity  because mostly uh based on coal but so, but in terms of electricity saving the program that covered about 10 products helped to reach a 7.1 terawatt hour of annual savings. This helped the consumer to save on the energy bill about 47 percent per household and they were so in terms of emission obviously a very important amount which is 6.8 million per of ton of CO2 per per year and and there are other benefits that are more environmental such as you know reduction of pollutants and water saved and I think what's important here is to the goal of looking at the impact of the program is also to help show the importance of energy efficiency in achieving climate goals and other benefits for the country, even—you know in South Africa with what's important also is reducing water use and other benefits that sometimes are not trivial. So, can be shown through energy efficiency potential studies and planning. Next slide please. 

So here is an example of Kenya who implemented a national cooling action plan and so energy efficiency potential studies have demonstrated in many countries especially developing countries and emerging economies that a lot of the growth in the demand for energy consumption is expected from the increase of consumer using cooling products like refrigerators and air conditioning or fans for example. So, these products are very energy intensive but there are also the source of potential energy savings or significant potential energy savings in 15 years. The energy performance of refrigerators have been divided by three so if you look at the consumption of a refrigerator that is 15 years old then you'll see the potential to reduce that consumption significantly. So, because coding is essential in a session you need for a society to develop many governments across the world have developed  national cooling action plans. So their strategy roadmap policy roadmap that promote sustainable and smart coding across the countries and they provide a framework for coordination and cooperation among stakeholders and government and other actors that can help implement different aspects of the strategy so  and any time of policy there are different. Looking at the different type of policy as we mentioned in the policy package previously looking at a minimum energy performance standardsm but also looking at also the opportunity for financing type of programs. Yeah so, next slide. 

So this is my last slide and just takeaway on that topic of policy and planning. So, planning generally is key to communicate the value of energy efficiency to policy makers and to stakeholders. It's they are very important to integrate energy efficiency as a key strategy in broader policy objectives like NDCs. We haven't talked about like integrated resource planning, important cooling plan that we mentioned, and also potentially other type of rograms which says, for example economic recovery programs. So generally, we start with energy efficiency potential studies to assess the energy savings opportunities and look at the cost also and the application and the other benefits that comes with implementing energy efficiency and then develop policy roadmap to prioritize actions to reach—help reach the country to achieve those benefits and those savings and this is generally supported by modeling and that helps to track progress report results also especially in terms of energy savings and emission reduction and also, to raise the ambition to make impacts. Alright thank you very much. I think next is Ana Maria. Thank you, Stephane. Good day everyone! So, we just heard from Amanda and Stephane about the benefits of energy efficiency. They talk about the climate mitigation benefits, the energy savings as well in this section we are going to review some interventions that have been successful in sub-Saharan Africa. We will be reviewing in particular energy efficiency standards and labels through the lens of a technology. If we can go to the next slide, please. 

We're going to be talking in particular about cooling. So, in this context, you know, cooling—we're referring to space cooling. For comfort: fans, air conditioners and we are also talking about refrigerators for storing food, storing medicine, and others. And of course standard and labels are a key tool to address the cooling crisis and by that, we mean—you know the lack of access to cooling globally and of course the increase in sales of cooling equipment in this warming globe and in the context of, you know, growing populations and increase access to electricity. In Africa in particular, the cooling crisis I think can be seen through three different lessons. One of course is the lack of access to cooling. This has been quantified by SE4All through the Chilling Prospects report, at about 389 million people that are a higher risk because of—due to lack of access to cooling. Another issue is many countries in the region have not implemented yet the standards and labeling programs that prevent inefficient products from entering the markets and we want—what we are seeing is environmental dumping of super standard equipment that has, for instance, a low energy efficiency equipment that contains hazards of substances, as well. CLASP has done an analysis just focused on room air conditioners and we found out that in the African market, especially in African countries low efficiency warm air conditioners made about 35 percent of new sales. So, it's a significant number and then I think another core issue is the input of secondhand appliances. We've seen that especially including produce in in refrigerators as well in many countries as well. So this will talk about these challenges and how we can provide some solutions. Next slide, please. 

Stephane talked a little bit about the adoption of the standards and labeling globally. So, this  puts the lens on a specific key African countries and then we'll talk about coolings on the left. You see countries that have implemented MEPS, minimal energy performance standards and labeling for space cooling and refrigerator about 40 percent for space cooling and 20 percent of refrigeration. So, it's still an important amount of countries that need to adopt policies and opportunities of course to continue implementing energy efficiency policy. If we can go to the next slide and just talk a little bit how MEPS work. 

So this is what you see in this chart is models of refrigerators that are currently sold in Uganda. In the left axis you see the energy consumption so the higher the number the more energy the refrigerator uses. On the x axis is the adjusted volume, so the refrigerator volume in liters and then the line reflects our recommended minimum energy performance standards by the united proficiency model regulations and how standards work if the standard were going to be adopted at this line. Every dot above of the line will not be allowed to be sold on the market and those are considered inefficient refrigerators. So, with the standards you get rid of the least efficient products on the market. Next slide. 

So we, I said we were going to talk about a specific example since about in Africa I want to start with the case of Ghana that has implemented standards and labels for many years since 2005. They've done comprehensive impacts analysis to understand the benefits of the cooling policies in Ghana and you see here on the left some of those benefits quantified significant electricity savings 10.16 terabyte hours. It started so labels can also help in delaying the building of capacity. So, in the case of Ghana that translated into about 1,160 megawatts of capacity that was not needed because of the standards. We also talk about the benefits to consumers. So you know savings on the electricity bills in this case of over 1 billion and of course kind of mitigation and savings of tons of CO2 emissions of about 6.32  million. In the case of Kenya, the MEPS that were adopted for refrigerators and for air conditioners a significant impact on the market we estimated that the MPES adopted in 2019 eliminated about 73 percent of the models of the least inefficient products of the market and there's also you know support through energy efficiency of a transition to better refrigerants and to compliance of obligation something the Montreal protocol which phases out refrigerants that have high ozone depletion potential, high global warming potential as well. In the case of Kenya that meant that through the intervention of adopting energy efficiency standards one of the refrigerants that has very high ODPOs and depletion potential was eliminated which is R22. Next slide please. 

Other opportunities to scale up the markets and especially you know the adoption of high efficiency technologies through a standards and labeling program is, of course you know, making the label better understand by consumer groups, making the label better understand by retailers. I mentioned in Kenya the standard was implemented for the air conditioners and refrigerators in about 2019. The EPRA, the agency who implemented the standard decided to launch a consumer awareness campaign so that consumers understand how do I read the label, what it is mean, what do the stars mean? In this case the more stars the better. So, you can see on the right more stars more savings and these are campaigns that are targeted to consumers that have purchasing decisions. So through social media and other tools you can make sure that you target the campaign appropriately and you know very successful in order to raise awareness of the benefits of the program as well. Next slide. 

Other mechanism to scaling up the adoption of the standards and labels and especially, to remove some of those barriers related to the purchase price of the equipment are financial mechanisms and in this case we have a very successful example in Ghana that has the U4E base and the energy Commission of Ghana developed these Innovative financing mechanism for refrigerators that allows users to pay through their monthly salary deductions, basically financing the purchase of more efficient equipment. Next slide please. Other mechanisms or other business models to also remove some of those barriers are the use of, for instance cooling as a service business models and in this case, there is a technology provider that is in charge of installing and maintaining the appliance and the consumer basically pays the use of the of the equipment of the cooling system and that model is called paper service model. So this completely eliminates one of the challenges which is which is the higher up from cost of investment in a high-efficient equivalent equipment and at the same time provides an incentive for the technology provider to make use of the most efficient equipment to increase the revenue as well. Next slide. 

Is Stephane talked a little bit as well about, you know, policy planning how we incorporate all these interventions into a general planning document in the context of cooling. We have seen many countries developing National Cooling Action Plans with the idea to bring all the different interventions together including efficiency including transitions, to you know better refrigerants including actions to increase access to cooling as well. She talked about the case in Kenya and including here a list of countries that are or have already developed or developing National Cooling Action Plans as well as a mechanism also to bring all the stakeholders and other unidentified key actions to enhance access to sustainable cooling. Next slide. 

I think this is the last one some of the key takeaways then on these lens through technology and services and I think as we've heard while we're expecting higher access of electricity, rising incomes and of course, this is going to drive the ownership and the use of appliances and equipment in the sub-Saharan region. So interventions like energy efficiency policy will be needed to slow the growth of electricity demand and of course to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are resulting from that energy use. We talk about the relevance of secondhand appliances in the market and how it's important to stop the input of these products and that can be done through a standards and labeling and of course improving MEPS and energy labels as well, will contribute to further electricity savings as well, and overall, you know, appliances can improve life. So, now we have seen the context they're only on cooling but other productive users as well. So, I think that I'll leave it like this and then I'll hand it over to Rodrigo to tell us a little bit more about the financing aspect. Thank you very much Ana Maria. 

So, let's discuss now about how to finance energy efficiency. So, overall the energy efficiency projects have payback periods that can be easily between three to five years but however there is a high perception risk by investors and the financial industry. So, one interesting thing is that the investors don't always perceive or are aware of these benefits and prefer to invest in other assets where they feel more familiar with the risk. So, one example of this is the replacement in air conditionings in hotels in some areas. So, in this case it's, so it's very common that the owner prefers to invest in changing the lobby of the rooms rather than upgrading their conditioning systems.

 So, these are investments that will reduce the operational cost and they essentially don't do it because the equipment is still working. So, and on the other side the financial institutions also have trained to have a lack of trust in the technology and do not accept energy wfficiency equipment as collateral and neither they consider the energy savings as a positive income or for the projects so the the institutions the financial institutions trying to evaluate the projects based on the balance sheet of the companies and not of the project, so that brings some additional— some projects some challenges to them. So, additional challenges for the projects on energy investment in energy efficiency are the project size. Normally that these are small size investments  that requires a large upfront cost compared to other technologies and one nature I think of this project is that the when the banks intend to measure the energy savings or CO2 reduction that involves some additional transaction costs that I'll have to be bear by the project. Next slide. 

So, over here, one of the things that has happened over the last years is that there have been some innovation or instruments to try to mitigate or transfer the risks that I just mentioned. So, normally in the energy efficiency process you have three types of risks: the performance risk, the credit risk, and the regulatory risk. So the instrument that has been developed usually try to cover the first two: one the performance or the credit risk. So, in this context various instruments have been proposed and tested in developed markets but also and adapted locally but also some new instruments have been emerging in developing countries that have been transferred internationally. So, we are going to touch on some of these and provide some examples in Sub-Saharan Africa also. The very important interesting thing is the innovations has been developed in the supply side, as well as in the demand domain. So that means that essentially in the supply domain the intention has been normally to to bring efficient or concessional financing and reduce the transaction costs of the projects and in the demand side the interventions are intended at the project level to reduce the delivery risk of the savings. So in the red box on the side, you see some of the names of the of the instruments from demand side management to other instruments like dedicated funds or risk transfer instruments. So we're going to talk about these in the next few slides. So, next slide please. 

So the first example in this is the utility demand side management for incentives. This is also known as home build financing. This instrument has been in the market in the in essentially in the development economy since the 70s and the way it works is that the utility incurs the initial cost of the technology upgrade, finance the consumer, and collect the loan through the utilities of the customer and the customer benefits from the energy savings. So, this is often the most common energy efficiency financing mechanism in many low-income developing countries where the financial institutions are not as well developed. And also it has been also the target of the residential sector one of the advantages that allow the utilities to cope with the growing electricity demand and avoid large Investments required for new supply capacity. 

This type of instrument has been normally attractive for low Investments. That means in investment that are in the hundreds to the thousand dollars and with the repayment is between two and five years. An example of this is a corporation in Ghana that was already mentioned it with focused on the replacements of refrigerators and air conditioners. The program in Ghana includes the proper collection and disposal of used appliances particularly to avoid the release of those on the interpreting substances. So, as you see these particular instruments address the performance and financial risks in low capital investments. So, the beauty of this is that it's very simple in terms that it has only two three players that is the customer, the utility, and the contractor. Next slide. 

So, this is a second scheme or second instrument that is the devoted credit lines. So, essentially a financial institution creates a loan for energy efficiency investments. That's the basic principle, so the end user takes the credit and deals with the contractor and pays for the equipment of the services. So, normally this is technology oriented. So, this is intended for specific technologies and ideally the project is structured to tie the loan payments to the energy savings because they're the whole concept and the way it works also that the banks have a positive list of technologies and estimate the savings by default. For example, for the lighting or motors based on some thresholds that they already have based on, for example, in the state standards and labeling. For more complex projects and normally these credit lines devote some technical assistance to estimate the savings and the cash flows that the project will incur. 

So, in this kind of schemes the commercial banks use the wrong ones or use concessional finance from international agencies or guarantees from the government. The challenge of this project is normally to have a reliable pipeline of projects and so therefore most of the technical assistance is for that part—to establish a good pipeline, employees, and also to establish marketing campaigns and the example of this is the SUNREF program. As you see here in this program in Ghana has a list of technologies that are eligible for the loan and the program provides grants up to 10 percent on free technical assistance and of course the loans have to be in competitive terms. So, over here the difference as you said you see is a bit more complex scheme but where you have essentially three players that are the customer, the financial entity, and the contractor and the government, and the development banks might be or not might be present in this kind of programs. This program has also attracted foreign investments in the thousands for their hundred thousand dollars—US Dollars— and repayments around the two to five years. Alright, next slide. 

Here is a more a bit more complex scheme with, that is called the energy savings companies. So essentially the energy savings company is a contractor that goes beyond the sales of equipment. So, an ESCO understands the cash flows of the energy savings and their incomes come from the energy savings. So, what happened is that the ESCO, the energy saving company, does the project development the financing and the implementation and receive payments from the customer base on their own savings. So, the ESCO takes the loans from the financial institutions to purchase the equipment and take the performance and create risk in some models. The ESCO only takes the performance risk and the owner is the one who takes the financial risks. So, one of the things that is important is that the ESCO model is based on energy savings, performance contracts therefore to be successful this this kind of schemes need is that the country has a solid regulatory environment. So, this is one of the requirements in this type of scheme normally the contracts are for 5 to 20 years and the investments are in the 500k to the 5 million range and in this case as you see you have a different type of players. You have the customer, the financial entity and the and the ESCO. Now, next slide. 

Over here, we have another scheme is that dedicated funds. So essentially our funds devoted for specific for funding projects in energy efficiency. So, in the fund, in the revolving fund in this case contractors serve as a financial entity and service provider in front of the customer. So, the revolving fund hires the service providers to implement the projects and monitor the energy savings and the beneficiary makes fixed payments based on the baseline of the energy bill and the fund pays to the utility or the energy supplier. So, the incentive for the beneficiary is to have a lower energy cost in the bill, so that's the only reason we will be interested in that and the scheme is intended for more complex projects. So, it's not technology oriented—so it's not for a particular technology but projects will need more complex interventions and normally it's in buildings, for buildings or hospitals, schools, and public buildings. 

One of the challenges that require proper auditing and the estimation of balance of baselines. So, that's one of the things to the challenge is to develop again, in this case, also a good pipeline of projects. So, in Africa the result in Southern Africa there is a in Morocco or the Sustainable Energy for Africa that is working with this approach and right now has a project that has been granted—to receive a grant to develop a super ESCO for energy efficiency investment. One important point of this type of fund is it has to be sustainable and so it has to create its own cash flow to keep the fund working for some time. So, in the players here again: the customer, the revolving fund, and the contractor. Next slide. 

A final example in the risk-sharing facilities— this is a bit more complex scheme and in this case, I'm just presenting one of them that is the energy savings insurance. So what happened is that the provider guarantees the savings to the customer through an insurance. The insurance constitutes a second layer of protection after the performance contract. So, in this context the insurance mitigates the performance risks. One of the advantages of the projects with insurance receive better financial terms from the financial entity because the insurance can also be transferred to the financial institution. This type of investment—this type of scheme is intended mainly for small and middle enterprises with when you have standardized technologies that facilitate the project monitoring normally to reduce the transaction cause in this scheme, the savings are monitored annually to reduce that cost. One of the disadvantage of this is that you have to include two new players that are essentially the insurance companies and the validated entities but it has the benefit that is perhaps the project with the lower  risk right now, this scheme is developed it has been developed in Morocco with the support of BASE and Société d’Ingénierie Énergétique.

 Next slide, so in summary there have been new initiatives created or developed to promote financial barriers and the risk perception. So, the schemes that have been created seek to transfer the performance risks at the financial risk among the different market players. So, the range of financial options includes from simple solutions, for a specific technologies to more complex schemes like the use of insurance for that. Another important thing with this scheme is that the successful implementation or normally requires technical assistance and one of the recommendations is that the results has to be evident in two years to keep the momentum. The important thing over here is the instruments depend on the size of the projects and target markets so that means that there is no one solution that fits all the types of problems but it depends normally on the size of the project and the target market. So, you can apply different financing solutions on that. So, that's all from my side and thank you. Back to you, Amanda. 

Thank you so much, Rodrigo, Ana Maria, and Stephane. So, we do have a few questions that have come in  the chat and maybe since Rodrigo—we were just chatting finance, I'll love this first one at you. It's from Lily— I'm not sure which country you're chiming in from—but they asked are there any case studies for microfinanciers financing energy efficiency projects? Yeah, indeed. That's a type of instruments that, because the list can be really long, so I just wanted to mention a few of them but microfinance is also another aspect that has been really moving also the agenda. But again is one of the challenges of this is they need to have like a sustained efforts on that so the funds have to be really sustainable in the long run and in that case you will have to deal with institutional—financial institutions that are more interested in this kind of microfinance schemes. Thanks, Rodrigo! 

Maybe turning back over, Ana Maria and I know, Ana you worked through your presentation pretty quickly to get us back on time. So please feel free to expand on anything we might have skimmed over as well. But one question came in for you directly. Can you speak to the data collection issues on product sales and efficiency ratings? That's been challenging in many developing partner countries. This is from William Prindle. Yeah and I think it's an important question because the data and the information on baseline efficiency and opportunities is the basis for any policy decision making. So in general we start with a market data collection and you know the challenges—the participant is saying is in countries where we don't have infrastructure when we don't have standards and labels it is hard to know what is the performance of products that are available on the market. I think the situation has changed significantly in the past years. We know that many countries in Africa have adopted standards and labels so you know the recommendation is look at what your neighbors are doing sometimes the market can be similar. What we'd like to do is we still want to collect information on the products that are available on the market, and sometimes you can get information on a model based on performance as well. But there are many initiatives that are taking place regionally as well especially in the east African communities, in the SATC community where efforts are already in place to try to establish what are the best efficiency levels for the region and I think that's a great starting point for countries that are interested in looking at standards and labeling. Just look at the neighbors. Look at you know, the regional associations as well because there's been already a lot of efforts in data collection in understanding efficiency baselines and in providing recommendations of efficiency levels as well that are appropriate for the region or for the countries. 

Thanks so much, Ana Maria and one another really great question I think that came in from William Prindle. Maybe I'll add this over to Stephane to kick us off but others please feel free to chime in. The question is in the implementation strategy area. Can the panelists speak to the role of voluntary programs like labeling based promotional programs like Energy Star and utility incentive programs? These can be key to building market shares that minimum energy performance there has become easier to set and to increase over time. So maybe I'll start with Stephane but open it up to all of you. 

Yeah, so Energy Star is kind of an endorsement label and so what we see in many countries in Africa is that they generally have the labels that are different stars and so you know like Energy Star is generally 20 percent more efficient than the standard and so,  for example, if you have a three star or depending on which label you're looking at, but you can have a five star that will be, you know, the equivalent of Energy Star, a type of label program and then DSM type of program or utility and scientific program. Yes it's kind of the policy package and the complementary type of policy and those will help to target those very more efficient equipment and have specific programs like  on-bill financing or you know like the other type of programs that Rodrigo talked. And then our financing program—so that those more efficient equipment that are five stars or any Energy Star can penetrate in the market and those after like in a virtuous cycle at some point will become the new standard. So, yes this is the kind of a complementary of this type of policies. 

Amanda, if I may add to the question as well and I agree with everything that Stepahne said just to say, you know, what we are seeing is MEPS are the preferred policy intervention by many governments and I think it goes back again to the first question because it sets up a framework when you do a minimum energy performance standard you select the test method to measure performance, the finance efficiency level that is appropriate for the market and that's the basis for all the other interventions that Stephane and Rodrigo talked about. So, really governments preferred MEPS and it's also the most impactful tool that voluntary energy labels endorsement labels like Energy Star can use as a foundation for additional  scaling up of energy efficiency interventions. Yeah, we just saw that. I think this is one of the things that the banks love because it helps them to create this positive list of investments the banks usually have a challenge to decide what kind of Investments to finance. So when you have this list of energy efficiency equipment so they create this list of equipment they want to finance and it's easy for them to make a quick evaluation and decide if they are in within their target and facilitated the loan. So, I would say that in the—yes the certain was positive and efficient way to start with these problems. Thank you so much, everybody! Really great points. 

We have a few more minutes. Maybe I'll just turn our last few questions are in the finance sphere, I think. So, one, maybe—all of you are welcome to opine but maybe we'll start with Rodrigo in terms of, I mean, we looked at several different models of innovative financing. I think, maybe one bigger question is kind of like, where do you start? What do you think has been the most successful these models or the easiest to kind of implement if you're at a starting point? And then a follow-on question Rodrigo is how can blended finance help in reducing barriers toward addressing energy efficiency and climate change? Where to start I would say that perhaps the simplest scheme is really the credit lines with the banks really create devoted lines for energy efficiency investments. So I would say that will be the most simple scheme when involving the financial institutions beyond their on-bill financing so that would be the best way to to engage really the financial institutions in the country. So create the energy efficiency guidelines for them. One important thing is that you have to make sure that the banks spend their time really working what they do best is in the risk assessment of the client and not to focus on the energy savings because sometimes that's one of the big risks that the banks make is that they try to focus too much on the technical side and what happens is that they always have challenges because the commercial offices in the banks are not very familiar with that. So set aside the team, they'll do the assessment of the energy savings and then focus the background in the risk assessment which is essentially what they do. So that will be my suggestions in the in that context. So, credit lines with the technical assessment conducted by specialists or for specific units or just creating these positive lists of investments to make their life easier. That's perhaps the best first suggestion. The second: how blended finance can support this? Yeah, as I mentioned one of the things that has these type of programs is the high transaction costs in some cases. So blended finance can't help reduce the transaction cost by providing the technical assistance. So with the technical assistance you can start creating this portfolio of projects that are really— that you can rely on the savings. That could be one option and the second, to make sure that the banks also understand that this project has lower risk that they perceive. So in that way if they understand really the risk of the projects they will be able or willing to provide loans at a better rate and that the duration line of credit. That was that the second point that will be tied to the first. So good technical assessment by projects, reduce the transaction cost and improve also and facilitate to the user to get better terms. So in that context the the concessional finance can tap into those two funds, use the funds for technical assistance and also to facilitate reduce the credit conditions for the user. Fantastic! Thanks, Rodrigo. 

Okay I'm gonna put one more question in there because I think this is gonna help us make a nice final plug for energy efficiency standards. Sarah Hughes wrote: in a small resource poor environment with competing demands for funds setting up testing labs and ensuring enforcement of EE standards might not be feasible. What mechanisms do you see that might be effective for encouraging adoption of EE standards in smaller states?  So, I'm gonna say maybe Stephane take the first crack at this because I think much of our work does not necessarily require your own, kind of, testing labs and things of that nature and is a much smaller financial level lift, but let Stephane chime in on this. Stephane, you're muted. Sorry! Yes, so I mean testing is the goal to standards verification. So there are many different aspects of the program that you can set in place for, first you know, monitoring the market, you know, through for example a registration database and smaller intervention that can help make sure there is compliance. Then, so, testing generally there is also when it comes to standards and labeling there is also a lot of coordination and collaboration at the regional level. So, there are different aspects of that so I think you know when it comes to  the standards themselves, there is a collaboration on harmonization and then there is also coordination on testing and looking at maybe at the regional level if there is an opportunity to pull resources and have a testing. So, we've seen some collaboration there in East Africa and other regions but really, I mean, what's important is but, I just want to emphasize that there is a lot at the national level that needs to be done when it comes to implementation of the standards and and a lot of different smaller, incremental intervention that can be implemented  to help on the compliance that doesn't need testing. So, I'm sure, Ana Maria. Thank you so much. 

We are definitely at time now and these are some great questions and we didn't get to all of them but I will wrap us up. I'll point you all toward the brief survey that's in the screen. Thank you so much to all of our panelists for for joining us and for all the participants. If you want to learn more SURE/Scaling Up Renewable Energy program has a huge—we've got our website online! You can learn more or contact us directly. The Energy Efficiency for Development program also has a website you can also contact us directly to learn more there, as well as CLASP. I'm sure Ana Maria would be happy to chat more about any of these things. So, please reach out and we will be sending this recording out and hope to see you all again soon! Alright thank you so much, everybody! Thank you! Have a good day, everyone! Thank you.