In Bulgaria
A good example of MUNEE's approach is in Bulgaria. EnEffect , the national energy efficiency center, is in the process of identifying all lenders that provide loans of under US$100,000 and all small businesses that are involved in the energy efficiency field. EnEffect will meet with several of these small lenders, promote energy efficiency as the strong business prospect that it is, and involve the companies and cities that would be most appropriate to receive small loans.
At the same time, EnEffect will develop a pipeline of smaller projects in interested and committed cities. The projects will be a mixture of street lighting, district heating projects (particularly substations) and end-use efficiency - where the commercial feasibility has been demonstrated previously, where the technology is not too complicated and where the overall technical risk is low.
The end-result of this will be a one-day meeting, "marrying" microlenders, energy efficiency businesses and cities where EnEffect has identified projects. MUNEE may provide some modest additional assistance in preparing loan applications, but microcredit agencies - by their very nature - try to keep the loan requirements simple and straightforward. In the end, we are aiming to "marry" the SME/microcredit sector with the small energy efficiency business sector. Our goal is to have microlenders giving loans to cities and companies to do energy efficiency - and more importantly, to keep the process going. Many of the clients of microcredit agencies are repeat customers. At that point, MUNEE can disseminate the results across the region.