Italy to fund local projects related to renewable energy |17 February 2018
The Italian government will be funding future activities and projects in relation to development of renewable energy and energy efficiency following the signing of an agreement on Thursday.
The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by the principal secretary (PS) for energy and climate change Wills Agricole and the director general in the Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea of the Italian Republic Francesco Le Camera.
Present during the signing held at the minister’s office, Le Chantier Mall, was the chief executive (CEO) of the Seychelles Energy Commission (Sec) Tony Imaduwa and the senior technical advisor from the Italian ministry Andrea Topo.
The birth of this signing on sustainable energy for climate change mitigation and adaptation all started following a bilateral meeting between the Seychelles Minister for Environment, Energy and Climate Change Didier Dogley and Mr Le Camera on the sideline of the inaugural high-level meeting of the Initiative for Renewable Island Energy (IRIE) held in the Maldives in October last year.
The agreement, which covers a period of five years, amounts to €2 million.
A joint implementation committee consisting of MEECC members, Italian officials and Sec representatives will be meeting within the next 6 months to develop a framework to choose priority projects and activities to be developed under this agreement.
PS Agricole said now is the right moment to strengthen our cooperation and enhance our climate change and energy policy dialogue and meet our Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
“The objective of this MoU is to promote secure, clean and efficient energy in order to strengthen and coordinate the efforts to combat global climate change, address its adverse effects and reduce vulnerability, to protect the environment and natural resources, and to stimulate the transition towards a sustainable low-carbon economy,” he said.
PS Agricole said a priority project would be to ensure that all government buildings are energy efficient through the installation of solar panels on the roofs.
“A very important aspect of the framework is the capacity building where Seychellois will be trained to install and manage renewable energy equipment,” he said.
He highlighted the priorities of the partnership which entail areas of common interest to both governments and they are to support the development and implementation of policies, strategies and plans in the sustainable energy sector in order to achieve the emission reduction target adopted by Seychelles where we have to reduce by 21% in 2025 and 29% by 2030.
The agreement also promotes and helps the development of renewable energies, in particular solar, wind, biomass and hydropower while enhancing energy efficiency across Seychelles and also assess and support the Nationally Determined Contributions (NCDs).
It also involves promotion and deployment of renewable energy technologies for off-grid application as decentralised systems especially for outlying islands; the stimulation and dissemination of the economic and technological transformation for low-carbon, sustainable development and also resources sharing, technical co-operation and information exchange with other global climate change initiatives, in particular in small island developing states.
Mr Le Camera said Italy is trying to implement the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030.
“Before and after Paris we have started to work on three main priorities in our cooperation activities and one priority is to add small island states from the Pacific to the Indian and Caribbean, then we have Africa. This is very important as in our point of view the islands are most affected by climate change so that’s why we are trying to find projects of common interest to ensure the transition to a low carbon economy while also trying to adapt to the changes that climate change will inevitably bring about in the next few years,” he said.