GCF climate project to support EUR 100 million worth investments in Serbia

Green Climate Fund (GCF) – European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) programme is expected to support around USD 100 million worth of investment opportunities in high-performance energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in Serbia, the Bank told the Balkan Green Energy News portal.

The EBRD and GCF co-financed USD 1.4 billion worth programme to deliver climate finance to the private sector at scale through Partner Financial Institutions across 10 countries.

The GCF, set up by 194 countries which are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will start funding its largest climate finance investment to date through projects in Armenia, Egypt, Georgia, Jordan, Republic of Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Serbia, Tajikistan, and Tunisia.

“For Serbia, the GCF-EBRD programme is expected to support around USD 100 million worth of investment opportunities in high-performance energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in Serbia. Financing is expected to be made available over a five year period via 3 – 5 partner financial institutions that are yet to be identified,” the EBRD said.

As regards to the actual financing, the first investments are expected in 2019.

The Bank noted that the investments originated under the programme are expected to avoid the equivalent of almost 3 million tonnes of Serbia’s carbon dioxide emissions.

A few days ago EBRD and GCF signed an agreement at COP 23 in Bonn.

“This programme will deliver climate finance at scale via Partner Financial Institutions (PFIs) in developing countries, which will fund over 20,000 scalable and replicable projects across industrial, commercial, residential, transport and agricultural sectors,” GCF said in a statement.

The GCF will provide USD 378 million to this USD 1.4 billion programme to support thousands of individual investments in technologies that reduce emissions and enhance resilience to climate change.

Money for energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate resilience

Sustainable Energy Financing Facilities is an on-lending programme that will provide credit lines to PFIs with the aim to create self-sustaining markets in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and climate resilience.

The PFIs in the Programme will on-lend the funds to the borrowers such as Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, special purpose companies and households for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and climate resilience projects.