Seven major municipalities in the Athens Metropolitan Area join efforts to launch showcase energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, utilizing innovative financial tools and attracting private investments. The projects comprise energy efficiency interventions in 116 municipal buildings, integration of a total 3.2 MW of photovoltaics on the roofs of these buildings and re-lamping for the municipal lighting. Total energy savings is 45.6 GWh/y and renewable electricity production is 4.8 GWh/y. Total cost for interventions is 20.24 M€ and the PRODESA cost is 1.06 M€.
To achieve its objectives, the project shall focus on optimal bundling of the fragmented municipal projects to achieve considerable size, reasonable payback time and risk diversification. Bundling is also expected to lower processing costs. Pooling of resources is used to optimize financial results for all parties and to ensure high participation of ESCOs in the tenders. The newly introduced National Revolving Fund for Energy Efficiency and the Utility ESCO Fund will be part of the pool. Pooling will facilitate the exploitation of innovative financing schemes. Crowdfunding has been recently introduced in the Greek legislation and this tool will be carefully studied and applied.
PRODESA is the first of its kind effort in Greece and aims to significantly contribute to the Energy Performance Contracting take-off. For this reason the project consortium has pooled together Key Actors such as the National Center for energy efficiency, the European Crowdfunding Network and entities with technical, financial and legal expertise. Being a showcase project, it emphasizes on capacity building, replicability, dissemination and exploitation of results. Two replicator municipalities are directly involved in the project and a network of at least 30 replicators will be initiated with the help of the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece.