BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 6. The EU Delegation is launching a project ‘Support for further improvement of energy efficiency in Azerbaijan’, Bilyana Chobanova, the Team Leader of the project, senior sustainable energy policy expert, told Trend.
“It is an EU-funded project. EU Delegation funds projects that support strengthening energy efficiency legislation in Azerbaijan. It is a kind of prolongation of the work done earlier within the EU4Energy project. The law on Alternative Use of Energy Resources and Energy Efficiency in Azerbaijan was adopted a year ago and according to this law, the Ministry of Energy needs to develop specific secondary legislation related to energy efficiency in buildings and energy efficiency for household appliances. So, what we’re doing within our project is supporting the Ministry of Energy to develop this secondary legislation. We will be discussing what standards, what are the best practices in building standards across Europe and internationally, that need to be adopted in Azerbaijan. They support scaling up the energy efficiency,” said Chobanova.
Also, the team leader pointed out that within the legislation there will be energy certification schemes for buildings introduced.
“That would help all building owners to understand how much energy their buildings use. There are energy labels for refrigerators or for air conditioners and similar rating will be introduced for buildings and the owner will immediately be able to see whether his building is consuming too much energy. Then he can decide on moving to energy renovation, so he will have a modern low-consuming building and pay less for energy. It is now very popular in Europe with the increasing energy prices. This is the best way to reduce energy bill,” she explained.
Chobanova went on to add that the project’s implementation will take one year.
“We start in January 2022 and probable will finish it in November or December this year. It has a very concrete objective: to develop the secondary legislative act, to submit it to the Energy Ministry and organize training sessions for the staff of the Energy Ministry, the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture so they could properly follow up on the implementation of this legislation. So, this is our role to develop the draft legislation and to train the policymakers to make them understand what is in the legislation and how to implement it,” she said.
The team leader of the project noted that the draft legislation has already been submitted to the ministry in April.
“I expect that in the coming weeks it will be sent to the Cabinet of Ministers for approval. What we want to introduce are the energy efficiency certificates. So, what we’ve developed are rules, obligations for all public institutions to issue energy certificate for their own buildings and display it publicly and for residential buildings it will be gradually introduced in the coming years. For everyone who is selling or renting an apartment, they will be asked to have an energy efficiency certificate. The buyer will be able to know how much energy will the apartment use. This project is not focusing on supply side, it is looking into the demand side. We want to introduce energy efficient household appliances in Azerbaijan as a trend.
We have discussions with the Ministry of Energy and they are very much interested to continue working in this direction. They would like also to introduce requirements for the efficiency of newly-constructed buildings. Of course, this is very important, especially for Karabakh region, but not only, which is now rebuilt. The ministry would like to have very low energy consuming green buildings there. That’s why there should be certain standards adopted in Azerbaijan. We are introducing those standards, but this is something to be still adopted in the country. Probably, some additional technical assistance will be needed in the future to support all the institutions that need to adopt and implement all these standards,” said Chobanova.
She noted that energy efficiency potential in Azerbaijan is very big and the country is now starting to work in this area.
“There is a lot of work to do and the potential benefits for the country are really big. Only from introducing energy efficiency in buildings, gradually starting to renovate buildings in Azerbaijan, saving 2.5 and 3 gigawatt-hours of final energy consumption could be achieved, which is almost 10 percent of the final energy consumption of the buildings now. And that’s only for the beginning. Reducing of greenhouse gas emissions will considerably contribute to the target as part of the Paris Agreement. Energy efficiency is the main tool that would support Azerbaijan to reach the target of the Paris Agreement.
There are also many additional benefits. When you start renovating the building stock, there are thousands of new jobs created. So, it will really boost the construction sector. It is improving the indoor conditions of buildings enormously. With regulating the temperature, regulating the airflow, it has a number of health benefits.
In October we will hold training for the people who will be doing the certification. In mid-October, or in November we will have an awareness raising campaign. We will inform about the project results and give some recommendations,” the project’s team leader concluded.