Only by rationalizing energy consumption is it possible to reduce bills, and the European Union is very open to investments in energy efficiency projects in the Republic of Moldova, Minister of Energy Victor Parlicov stated at a press club meeting centering on the Financing Program of the Moldovan Residential Energy Efficiency Fund, IPN reports.
Victor Parlicov pointed out that over 50% of the energy consumed in the Republic of Moldova is intended for the maintenance of buildings. To maintain one square meter of building on average, twice as much energy is consumed as in the European Union countries. The Financing Program of the Moldovan Residential Energy Efficiency Fund will improve the energy performance of residential buildings in order to reduce the impact of energy charges and to enable the citizens to individually regulate the temperature in their homes, to benefit from increased comfort, but also to reduce the waste of energy resources.
The Residential Energy Efficiency Fund, launched in April this year, has a budget of over 1.4 billion lei and envisions the renovation of a heated area of at least 507,000 square meters of housing during the next three years, of which 75% are residential buildings, while 25% are individual houses, in order to achieve energy savings of over 40%.
National Center for Sustainable Energy director Ion Muntean stressed that additional financial solutions will be found for the socially vulnerable groups to cover the works. Almost half of the Moldovan Residential Energy Efficiency Fund’s budget will be money from the energy efficiency obligation mechanism. It is a program approved by the Government, which implies that from January 1, one ban (0.01 lei) per kWh will be deducted from the energy charge that comes to the National Center for Sustainable Energy’s budget to support the Fund’s Financing Program and will enable to annually accumulate €12 million, which will help attract external financing for energy efficiency projects.
For this year’s renovations, 25 apartment buildings in Chisinau, Balti, Straseni and Ceadir-Lunga were selected to be thermally insulated after they benefited from an energy audit.
Recently, the National Center for Sustainable Energy announced the completion of the assessment of the files submitted within the next call for the identification of tenants’ associations that will benefit from free technical assistance for conducting energy audits. Out of 49 submitted files to have energy audits conducted in 67 apartment buildings, the Center’s Financing and Risk Committee approved 38 requests from tenants’ associations for the rehabilitation next year of 48 multistorey blocks in Chisinau, Ialoveni, Hancesti, Ungheni, Edinet, Ceadir-Lunga and Vulcanesti.
The residential sector in the Republic of Moldova accounts for about half of the thermal energy consumed in the country. 64% of households in the country use firewood for heating and only 18.3% are connected to centralized heating systems, according to a study that was the basis for the development of the Sustainable Heating Roadmap. Another 16.5% of households use autonomous heating systems based on natural gas, electricity, wood or coal.
There are 1.3 million dwellings in the Republic of Moldova (574,000 in urban areas and 751,000 in rural areas), with a total of 90.5 million m2. Over 70% of them were erected between 1951 and 1990, and 70.6% of the houses in the country are individual houses.
