Enigin Update - UN Energy Efficiency Initiative fro East Africa
THE United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have announced a joint project to promote energy efficiency in East African buildings.
The programme was approved by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), providing $2,853,000 for energy efficiency projects.
UN-HABITAT refer to figures showing that 40 percent of energy in developing countries comes from urban buildings, and the UN report that more than 50 percent of the world's population live in city areas.
An added problem is that many new buildings in Sub Saharan Africa are not well designed for the local climate, meaning a lot of energy is used for things like lighting, ventilating, and especially cooling of buildings.
So UN-HABITAT and UNEP are working with the Kenyan, Uganda, Tanzanian, Rwandan and Burundi governments over the next four years in an effort to bring to East Africa the energy efficiency measures that are commonplace in the United States and Europe.
The various national governments will promote awareness campaigns, fiscal and financial incentives, and policy changes to change building codes and building practices.
UN-Habitat states the aims of the programme are as follows:
- The demand for electricity is increasing more rapidly than the supply and generation capacity in all countries in question. Increasingly higher energy prices coincide with a tremendous inefficiency in the use of energy.
- This tendency has led to energy becoming the limiting factor for sustainable development and economic growth in the recent years. Energy efficiency in buildings is a largely new topic for practitioners and most importantly for consumers and end users.
Every nation wishes to reduce energy waste, but with fragile economies developing countries, who cannot afford to waste precious resources, have little space to maneuver, so this programme will help them to prevent energy waste.
Enigin Distributors across East Africa are already helping businesses, industry, governmental authorities and other public organisations to save energy and money through application of Enigin Plc's energy efficiency solutions.
Picture from East Africa, Tanzania by David Berkowitz
