The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has granted Lebanon $3.4 million to reduce the nation’s energy bill, reported the Daily Star.
The grant, designed to save energy and cut costs in both public and private sectors, is the UNDP’s single largest environmental contribution to Lebanon and has been delayed by government bureaucracy.
The grant will become Lebanon’s first foray into streamlining energy costs and prompting industrialists and domestic users to use power efficiently.
“This energy efficiency project will in the long run help the economy by cutting costs for the public sector, industrialists, domestic users and other sectors,” said Lebanese Energy and Water Minister Mohammed Abdel-Hamid Beydoun.
“The project will also help Lebanon’s environment, cutting carbon dioxide production by 1 percent per year,” he added. “Once we implement this project we will be closer to the Kyoto environmental agreement than the United States.”
The government will give another $1 million to the five-year project, which is expected to be implemented in the next six months.
Another $500,000 will be secured from other resources to meet the project’s total cost of $5.4 million.
“We’re looking at encouraging households to install solar-power equipment to heat water, a process that can cut power bills in half,” Beydoun said.
For this purpose, the energy ministry is asking the industry ministry to subsidize industrialists who manufacture solar-power equipment, he added - Albawaba.com
