BUILD_ME III Project Kick-off and National Workshop on “How to accelerate the financing of energy-efficient buildings in Egypt?”

The Integrated Development Group (IDG), in partnership with its national partner: Housing and Building Research Center (HBRC), its regional partner RCREEE and its international leading partner Guidehouse conducted the National Kick-off of the third phase of BUILD_ME project: Accelerating 0-emission building sector ambitions in the MENA region on Wednesday 15/3/2023 at the Intercontinental City Stars Hotel, Cairo, Egypt. Representatives from different governmental entities, national & international financing institutions, energy specialists, project developers, contractors and Egyptian universities participated effectively in the workshop. 

The first phase of the project began in 2016 and focused on understanding the market and the main barriers for the uptake of highly efficient buildings in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. 
The second phase of BUILD_ME concentrated on developing different tools to close these gaps and improve the framework such as benchmarking, building energy performance (BEP) calculation tool, demonstration project database and enabling national trainers to use the tools and provide further trainings for local stakeholders. 
The BUILD_ME third phase shall focus on using these tools and frameworks developed to facilitate the financing of energy-efficient building projects.  

BUILD_ME project director in Egypt, Dr. Mohamed Salheen introduced the project brief and the recap of the first two phases of the project, discussing the outcomes reached and the milestones fulfilled. Then, Eng. Riadh Bhar, the BUILD_ME project manager at Guidehouse introduced the objectives of the third phase of the project, focusing on the roll out of an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) and the intensive collaboration with financial institutions and project developers. 

Two more presentations by financial institutions were conducted by Dr. Mohamed Abdelhameed, senior climate finance expert, EBRD/GEFF who gave an overview of green finance facilities in Egypt, followed by Eng. Kareem Hassan, Senior sustainability Expert, CIB, Egypt who presented on CIB sustainable finance as an example of national funding schemes in Egypt. 

The workshop ended with a lively discussion with all stakeholders tackling the available mechanisms and tools that facilitate the access to local and international financing channels to provide financial support for energy-efficient buildings, and how all stakeholders can cooperate. 

The Integrated Development Group is implementing BUILD_ME project in partnership with Guidehouse and the support of the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.