Cartagena, Colombia
Within the framework of the 1st Hydrogen and Energy Efficiency Congress developed by the National Business Association of Colombia (ANDI) the local NDC Action project team contributed to a discussion on the barriers and opportunities to help achieve the country’s NDC through accelerated action on industrial energy efficiency.
Energy consumption represents about 31% of Colombia's total GHG emissions. For this reason, Colombia's updated NDC establishes energy efficiency actions for the mining, energy, commerce, industry and tourism, environment and housing sectors with a combined annual mitigation potential of 10.51 Mt of CO2eq.
The promotion of energy management and energy efficiency projects in the industrial sector can reduce up to 15% of energy and/or GHG emissions. Additionally, these measures are associated with innovation processes that improve the competitiveness of industry, commerce and tourism, as well as the resilience of production processes to possible impacts of climate change.
Some progress has been made in the implementation of energy efficiency in Colombia, however there are important barriers to overcome in order to scale these up, including:
- Limited or unclear information and public policy signals that could enable companies to pursue existing opportunities.
- The atomization of actions that generates a low level of scalability and project portfolio creation.
- Limited managerial capabilities, especially in micro, small and medium-sized companies, which allow them to set goals and make decisions for their implementation.
- Limited innovation capabilities necessary to implement mitigation actions and process optimization.
- A need for patient and stable financing to provide continuity over time to the implementation of actions that do not depend on development cooperation.
- Limited capabilities for project identification and structuring
The NDC Action project proposes a differentiated approach to remove these barriers: for small and medium-sized companies, implement and sustain a National Energy Efficiency Program led by the Government, to raise awareness about the benefits of energy efficiency and strengthen the creation of enabling mechanisms for implementation. And for larger companies the NDC Action project aims to support the creation of an EE Initiative/agency led by the private sector, in coordination with the public sector, to boost investment and the integration of energy efficiency as a productivity and competitiveness strategy that will deliver significant emissions reductions.
