The South Asia Enterprise Development Facility (SEDF) program in Bangladesh started in 2008 with the main objective of enhancing Energy Efficiency/Renewable Energy (EE/RE) finance portfolio of financial institutions and to encourage the financial sector to consider environmental risk in lending proactively.
In developing EE/RE portfolio in banks one of the major barriers to energy efficiency is lack of local energy auditors who would be able to carry out audits and assist both the industry and banks in ensuring investment in energy efficient measures which will bring about efficiency gains and at the same time help protect the environment.
We helped develop the capacity in Bangladesh and Nepal in the area of energy auditing, focusing on:
- Conducting energy auditors’ trainings in Nepal and Bangladesh so that the trained auditors serve the energy intensive sectors to gain efficiency
- Conducting preliminary audits in industries in Bangladesh and Nepal in selected sectors by performing walk through energy audits for a prospective EE customer to gain information to guide project design and implementation. The walkthroughs gave the newly trained auditors hands on experience and provided a ground to match what they have learned with practice
- Developing preliminary reports indicating energy savings and potential investment options for industries which have been audited. These reports aimed to encourage bank financing, therefore they highlighted energy saving potential options for changes, probable investment amount and payback period