SE4ALL Building Efficiency Accelerator

In September 2011, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) as a global initiative to mobilise action in support of three interlinked objectives:

• Provide universal access to modern energy services
• Double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency
• Double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix

In support of the energy efficiency goal, SE4ALL catalysed a public private collaboration platform between businesses and governments called the “Global Energy Efficiency Accelerator Platform.” The Platform consists of six individual accelerators to help speed deployment of efficiency solutions and policies for buildings, lighting appliances, district energy systems, industry and transportation.

Building Efficiency Accelerator

The SE4ALL Building Energy Efficiency Accelerator (BEA), one of the six individual accelerators, is a programme that assists sub-national governments to improve the energy efficiency in their jurisdictions. The multi-sectoral collaborations in the programme help speed actions on efficiency policies and projects.

In the scale up phase in 2016–17, the programme assisted 30 sub-national partners and leveraged the expertise of over thirty (30) technical organisations and business partners. The BEA process of engagement in a city included support (light touch assessment) for:

• Assessing and prioritising locally – appropriate policies and actions;

• Implementing actions, matching city needs with expertise, resources and tools; and

• Establishing an approach for tracking action, documenting progress against policy and project goals, and sharing lessons learned.

For the programme, ICLEI South Asia was appointed as the BEA Regional Lead and was responsible for the implementation of certain set of activities that have been defined in an agreement between ICLEI World Secretariat and ICLEI South Asia.

Rajkot – the Deep Dive Assessment Partner

The global BEA partnership selected six BEA partner cities for a deeper support in 2016-17. Rajkot was one of the six cities selected globally to participate in deep dive engagement that funded one partner organisation to engage with the Rajkot city until November 2017. For this, ICLEI South Asia was selected and engaged by WRI to act as the lead organisation to plan and execute the work plan alongside the city. The engagement required working with the city for 12-16 months as a technical adviser. Under this capacity, ICLEI South Asia facilitated implementation of a work plan through collaboration with global and local partners for:

• Stakeholder engagement and events
• Technical support, including process, policy and project development, product and service options and project pipeline development/funding
• City leadership and recognition
• City-to-city networking and peer learning

Besides, ICLEI South Asia also managed other activities as necessary to enable the city to fulfill its action commitments. It was targeted that with this process, the city and ICLEI South Asia will build local capacity to continue building efficiency activities even after direct assistance through BEA ends.

In addition to this, an Investment Grade Energy Audit (IGA) was conducted on two selected RMC buildings viz. RMC Central Zone Office Building and RMC Multi-activity centre in Rajkot in order to identify the current status of energy performance of the selected buildings and advice on potential cost-efficient measures to improve it.

Moreover, the RMC prepared a Green Building Policy for the city. Implemented by the ICLEI South Asia, with support from World Resource Institute and the UN SE4All Initiative, the policy aimed to create incentives for resource efficient buildings that were urgently needed in cities to reduce the ever-increasing demand for resources by building sector.

Under the project, the Akshay Urja Rajkot/Rajkot SMART Energy Lab website was developed and launched by the Chief Minister of Gujarat Shri Vijay Rupani. The SMART Energy Lab, encouraged the adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency products and appliances with a mission to bring about sustainable, eco-friendly and energy efficient development of the Rajkot City.

Activities

11.02.2019
Nagpur Announces Deep Dive Commitment with Building Efficiency Accelerator

09.10.2017
Kick-Starting of Investment Grade Energy Audits on Two RMC Buildings in Rajkot under Building Efficiency Accelerator Project

26.09.2017
Akshay Urja Website Launch in Rajkot by Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani

04.09.2017
Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) preparing Green building policy for Rajkot city under BEA

12.05.2017
Ongoing Consultations to develop Green Building Policy Guidelines under BEA

08.05.2017
ICLEI South Asia represents BEA at 3rd Sustainable Energy for All Forum in New York

07.04.2017
Rajkot takes forward discussions on Building Energy Efficiency in city

13.10.2016
Regional partners meet in Singapore kicks off Building Efficiency Accelerator project