The finance is supported by technical advice and financial incentives for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) funded with an EU grant.
The total value of projects carried out by companies in Romania stands at EUR156 million.
“These projects led to annual energy and CO2 savings of 1,786 GWh, the equivalent of the household electricity consumption of the city of Bucharest for an entire year, or 394 thousand tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of taking 123,690 passenger cars off the roads for a year,” the EBRD said in a statement Thursday.
The EU-EBRD Romania SME Sustainable Energy Finance Facility (RoSEFF), launched in September 2011, is a key instrument for promoting the efficient use of energy to cut bills and boost the competitiveness of SMEs.
Banca Comercială Româna (BCR), BRD Groupe Société Générale, Banca Transilvania, CEC Bank, OTP Bank, Raiffeisen Bank and UniCredit Tiriac Bank have all been part of the EBRD and EU’s joint programmes financing sustainable energy in Romania, according to the statement.
The EBRD is the leading institutional investor in Romania. In 2014 alone, the Bank invested EUR600 million in the country. To date, the EBRD has invested over EUR7 billion across 370 projects in Romania. It has also mobilized more than EUR14 billion for these ventures from other sources of financing.