Public objects in BiH are currently consuming three times more energy than it is prescribed by the EU standards and they make a significant part of budget expenditures. Therefore, one of the primary tasks is to make them more energy efficient.
In order to assure this, yesterday was signed agreement between the Environmental Protection Fund of the FBiH and the Union Bank in the amount of 2 million BAM, thus starting financing of projects for energy efficiency (EE) in public sector buildings, as well as small and medium enterprises in the FBiH.
“Projects like this are very important for the establishment of sustainable financing of a new sector when it comes to projects of EE. Some issues remain unresolved due to lack of grant funds, so this is one way they can be solved. We want to create a sustainable system of refunds for investment in new facilities,” said Safet Harbinja, director of the Environmental Protection Fund of the FBiH.
The Amendment for the 2016 on the Agreement between the Embassy of Sweden in BiH and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in BiH was also signed through the Green Economic Development (GED) within the signing of the agreement yesterday, and signatories were Marie Bergstrom, Counsellor of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Sweden in BiH, and Sezin Sinanoglu, UNDP resident Representative in BiH.
The total value of the amendments for 2016 amounts to 2.15 million BAM, which will provide additional funding of the project activities in 2016.
Embassy of Sweden in BiH is strongly supporting BiH on its EU path. Some of the conditions that must be met for membership are related to energy efficiency.
“I am happy that I signed this kind of project on the World Health Day. Sweden as a country pays a lot of attention to environmental protection, thus it is clear that we will support this kind of things anywhere else in the world. Improvement of energy awareness will lead to more jobs, savings, better education, and above all, it will contribute to cleaner air and thus better health of people in the community,” said Bergstrom.
(Source: akta.ba)
