ECOWAS ENERGY EFFICIENCY TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE FACILITY

The ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) and Clean Energy Solutions Center (CESC) of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the United States of America have therefore joined efforts to promote an Energy Audit Market in the ECOWAS Region.

The initiative was designed to create and operationalize a technical assistance facility for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) whose business model includes provision of energy audit services. It is a follow up of the first energy audits training jointly organized by ECREEE and NREL in December 2015 in Praia, Cabo Verde, where local companies expressed their concern on the serious challenges they are experiencing in selling their energy audit services to Clients.

The collaboration was launched by Mahama Kappiah, Executive Director of ECREEE, and Victoria Healey, Project Manager at NREL at the maiden edition of the ECOWAS Sustainable Energy Week held in Accra, Ghana from October 17th to 19th 2016.

The overall objective of this CESC- ECREEE collaboration in West Africa is to promote energy audit as a valid and reliable market tool to enable Energy Efficiency.

The proposed collaboration has 3 main outcomes:

Outcome 1: To strengthen the capacity of private sector operators to perform energy audit services
Outcome 2: To raise awareness on the importance and economic potential of energy audits
Outcome 3: To boost the pipeline of bankable energy efficiency projects identified through energy audits.

This will directly contribute to the overall objective of the ECOWAS Energy Efficiency Policy to double the annual improvement in EE, to attain levels comparable to those of world leaders by 2020.

The ECOWAS Energy Efficiency Technical Assistance Facility is part of the ECOWAS Sustainable Energy Entrepreneurship Facility promoted by ECREEE and its partners.

SERVICES PROVIDED BY THE ECOWAS ENERGY EFFICIENCY TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE FACILITY

ECREEE and CES with the support Econoler and Carbon Trust, both international companies specialized in the realization of energy audits, will form a technical backstopping team (TBT).

TBT will support MSMEs on a rolling basis and it will not be liaising directly with the Client. Therefore the MSME is responsible for providing all the required information to enable TBT’s support. The payments from the Client will go entirely to the MSME providing the energy audit services.

A call for expression for application was done early 2018. After the evaluation of the received proposals 19 companies were selected to benefit from the Technical Assistance.

The support is divided into two phases.

Phase 1: Web Based trainings (Webinars)

The first part will aim at providing the entrepreneur with a better understanding of an Energy audit and on how market energy audit services. It will mainly be provided via the following 4 webinars.

Describe the suite of trainings anticipated to be provided through the webinars
introduction to energy audits
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy financing options
Tools for management

All 19 entrepreneurs will benefit from this phase. The above webinars along with other documents that will be provided to the entrepreneurs will be made available on this page and free for the public.

Phase 2: One on one support

The second part will be provided, only to the first 10 entrepreneurs that are able to secure an Energy audit contract.

After the MSME has been able to sign the contract with the Client, it will have to send a letter of request to the TBT including details on the service to be provided (name of client, address, financial arrangements, etc.). If the request has a favorable response, a Letter of Agreement will be signed between the TBT and the MSME detailing the scope of the assistance to be provided.

The TBT will accompany the MSME in the audit process and provide ad-hoc advice when required through emails and phone-calls. It will also review the final report and ensure quality control.

The phase will be separated into 4 stages: