In the Western Balkans, as elsewhere, many households have faced soaring energy prices, prompting them to look for innovative ways of lowering their heating and electricity bills.
For residents of apartment buildings, this challenge is particularly complex, as securing financing for large-scale joint investments is often difficult. Reaching consensus among apartment owners is one hurdle, while limited access to green loans for housing associations adds to the difficulty. In Serbia, however, this is slowly changing, thanks to the EBRD’s donor-supported Green Economy Financing Facility (GEFF) programme, which helps households to invest in energy efficiency measures.
In a pioneering move, Erste Bank, one of the programme’s local partners, has become the first bank to issue a loan of that kind to a housing association in Serbia, representing a significant milestone in energy efficiency investments for apartment buildings.
That first loan, which totalled around €86,000, has been used to finance improvements to three buildings in the town of Svilajnac, helping to replace outdated fuel-fired boilers with a modern, energy-efficient heating system. The housing association also received a financial grant of around €25,000 from the European Union.
Besides being more environmentally friendly, the new heating system is also fully automated and consumption-based, which allows residents to better control their heating and electricity usage.
One of the residents, Goran Petrović, who has lived in the building since 1975, is delighted that the old heating system has finally been replaced: “We would spend huge amounts of money every year on the purchase of fuel oil. Plus, we had to pay a caretaker to manage that system.”
In addition to the new heating system, the buildings’ owners have also invested in 12 energy-efficient entrance doors and windows, resulting in significant savings on shared electricity costs for common areas.
The housing association has achieved impressive energy savings as a result of the various improvements to the three buildings. According to Petrović, thermal energy consumption has dropped by around 60 per cent, while electricity bills for common areas are one-sixth of what they used to be.
The success of this investment represents a milestone in efforts to improve the energy efficiency of multi-apartment buildings in Serbia, which has a large stock of such buildings.
To help the country make progress in this area, the EBRD is providing financing for household loans – which are complemented by donor-funded grant incentives – through a network of local partner banks.
One of those local partners is Erste Bank, which is now playing a leading role in extending financing to housing associations, being one of the first banks to do so under the EBRD’s GEFF programme.
“Green finance is becoming increasingly vital for sustainable development and is playing a crucial role in global efforts to address environmental issues,” explains Ana Đunisijević of Erste Bank.
“We are proud to have worked alongside the EBRD for several years promoting energy efficiency investments for households. With the introduction of loans for housing associations, we are now able to help even more communities to improve their living conditions, reduce costs and move towards a more sustainable future.”
Since its launch in 2017, the EBRD’s GEFF programme has enabled over 20,000 households across the Western Balkans to invest in energy-saving measures. It remains the key programme in the region when it comes to helping individual households to adopt more energy-efficient solutions.
The programme is supported by many donors, such as the European Union, which provides funding as part of the Regional Energy Efficiency Programme – a wider initiative that secures financing for green investments in the public sector (schools, hospitals, district heating and so on), as well as assisting individual households. It is also supported by Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Japan.
“In Serbia alone, close to 7,000 households have invested in energy-saving measures with the help of GEFF financing. Together with our donors and partner financial institutions, we will continue to work on encouraging green investments in residential buildings, contributing to the decarbonisation of the Western Balkans countries,” says Aleksandra Vukosavljević, the EBRD’s Director of Financial Institutions for the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe.