Geothermal Energy Development Program , GeoFund

The Strategic Partnership for Geothermal Energy Development is designed with the goal to systematically promote the use of geothermal energy in the ECA Region through assistance in barrier removal, provision of financial support, and capacity building. Partners will be the participating countries in the ECA Region, the World Bank and GEF, International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as EBRD and other financial institutions focusing on ECA Countries, UNDP and UNEP, as well as multilateral and bilateral donors. The Partnership will be open to any of the ECA Countries. The Strategic Partnership would involve: (a)Provision of technical assistance and capacity building to transfer know-how and to establish a geothermal data base and capacities to develop and implement GE, (b)Support of capital investments in GE, (c)Development of reforms of the energy market related policies, legal regulatory and institutional framework, and (d)Monitoring of trends of use of GE and more generally RERs during the period of 2001-2007 in participating ECA countries. Under the framework of the Partnership, the World Bank and GEF will take the lead to set up the World Bank-GEF Geothermal Energy Development Fund (GeoFund) which will provide (a)A TA Window, (b)A partial risk guarantee window to mitigate against the geological risks, and (c)An investment finance window with contingent grants or low cost funding to help monetize externalities of geothermal projects. Other partners of the Strategic Partnership could be providing support for policy and institutional reforms, project preparation and implementation as well as co-financing for geothermal investments. The Strategic Partnership’s primary global objective is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the interest of climate change mitigation through implementation of geothermal projects. Thus, the Partnership through its technical assistance, capacity building, support of barrier removal and hands-on assistance in project funding would help participating countries in the Region in their efforts to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in compliance with their commitments to the Kyoto Protocol. It is well known, that ECA countries are large emitters of these gases on a per capita basis