GEF

The Indian government is thinking about the implementation of a kind of “star label” for solar water heaters. The institution responsible for the national Standards & Labelling Programme scheme is the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE). The national solar industry, however, has some reservations about this plan.
Source: www.bee-india.nic.in

Albanian's solar thermal testing centre: inaugurated in September 2008, managed by the Harry Fultz Institute in Tirana and financed by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Photo: www.entwicklung.at

Alongside the government, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) officially launched a solar water heater project in Albania, with its first workshop in Tirana on the 4^th of December. The project titled “Country Program of Albania under the Global Solar Water Heating Market Transformation and Strengthening Initiative” aims at installing 75,000 m² of new collector area in the country and supporting sustainable market growth targeting at annual sale figures of 20,000 m² by the end of the project in 2015.

Solar water heaters are still rarely seen on Lebanese roofs. The Lebanese Centre for Energy Conservation Project (LCECP) has now published the promising results of a study about the performance of one particular residential solar water heating system in South Lebanon.
Photo: www.solec.org

This case study from 2004 was prepared by the OECD and IEA secretariats and reviews past and current experiences in international collaboration in the field of CSP technologies. In addition to identifying the success stories and the failures of CSP related international collaboration, the case study also lists four important lessons:

1) International collaboration may help, but domestic policy decisions remain decisive

2) In technology transfer non-financial barriers must not be underestimated

This document provides an overview of a PDF-B (Project Development Fund) project, built-up in partnership with the UNDP and GEF, designed to improve the solar water heating market in Albania.

A recoupment period of two years: The University of Namibia in Windhoek replaced an oil boiler that had reached the end of its life cycle with 109 solar water heaters.
Photo: Namibian Engineering Cooperation/Solahart