When I first arrived in Bulgaria, my journey to work used to include a 20 minute trek through streets covered in ice and snow, during which all my extremities would go numb, and at the end of which I would be greeted by the more scalding than welcoming heat blasting out in the building, that cooked, let alone thawed out, aching fingers and toes. Ok, so it’s –26oC outside, but does it have to be 30oC plus indoors? This was my introduction to what experience has shown to be a nearly universal trait in Bulgaria, that of cranking up the heating to a sweat-breaking degree throughout the winter. Our landlord was certainly of the hotter is better school of thought, backing up to heaters, putting out a tentative hand and sucking his teeth in disapproval as he turned the thermostat up another notch. It’s understandable that he doesn’t want the pipes to freeze, but surely it’s not necessary to have water that’s actually boiling running through them.

I exaggerate, of course, but I’m sure those of you who, like me, hail from more temperate climates, will have noticed the tendency for buildings in Bulgaria with central heating to be on the stifling side of cosy. Excessive heating is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to energy efficiency, but with last year’s energy price hikes and more price increases predicted with the closure of units three and four at Kozloduy nuclear power plant, any excesses will be harshly felt on the pocket as well as on the environment.

Not surprisingly, then, energy efficiency has been on the agenda in Sofia recently. The 2nd International Congress on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources Financing and Mechanisms for Implementation, was held on March 8 – 10. At an energy forum in Sofia on March 23, Minister of Energy, Roumen Ovcharov presented his Concrete Measures for Energy Efficiency Programme. By focusing on the installation of insulation, the replacement of wooden doors and window frames and changes to street lighting, the programme aims to increase energy efficiency in 3000 state and municipal buildings. An estimated 208 million euro is needed to implement the energy efficiency measures. Ovcharov is approaching banks operating on the Bulgarian market to ease terms for loans on the energy efficiency upgrades.

Funding, of course, is always a key element in such projects and various approaches have been taken towards this in different countries in the region. In Poland, a project to secure funding for energy efficiency in the health care sector was announced as one of 32 New Clean Energy Projects by the Renewable Energy and Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) on March 27. There, as in much of Central and Eastern European, financing arrangements in the hospital sector are somewhat complicated and can act as a barrier to Energy Service Companies (ESCO) and banks undertaking financing and implementation of energy efficiency. The project in Poland aims to create a financial model to overcome these barriers by setting up energy performance contracts between ESCOs and hospitals and working with the Polish National Health Fund to negotiate policy changes necessary to allow it or another entity to guarantee payments to hospitals sufficient to cover annual payments to the ESCOs under the contracts. It is hoped that this pilot project will create a model that can be replicated across Poland to reach its more than 800 hospitals – all of which have the potential for energy savings of 20-40 per cent – as well as in other Central and Eastern European countries.

Back in Bulgaria, Sofia City Council has accepted a short-term programme for energy effectiveness to decrease the energy expenses in Sofia’s buildings. Tasko Ermenkov, head of the state agency for energy effectiveness, said that means could be allotted from the budget for the initial assessment of five or six buildings in order to ascertain what measures would be most effective in reducing energy expenses. He said that two million leva would be allotted this year for the project, which should be divided between 264 municipalities and that at least 5000 buildings were subject to certification.

This focus on the built environment was also apparent in other REEEP projects announced on Monday. “About a third of energy consumption world wide is in buildings,” said Marianne Osterkorn, REEEP’s international director. “If one assumes that worldwide there is a technical saving potential of energy consumption in buildings in the range of 50 per cent of energy used in buildings, then today almost 17 per cent of total global final energy consumption can be avoided due to energy savings measured in buildings.”

In Moscow, energy efficiency building codes were adopted in 1994 and since then 49 of Russia’s 89 regions have followed Moscow’s lead to reduce the heating requirements of buildings. In 2003, The Russian Federation passed legislation on energy efficiency and Kazakhstan adopted similar legislation in 2004. The new building codes have transformed markets and resulted in major manufacturing changes within wall panel, insulation and window factories. In the next five years, Russia will build about 250 million sq m of residential buildings. Another of the recently announced REEEP projects aims to improve compliance with building codes, provide building officials with improved skills for implementation and enforcement of codes and accelerate the pace of CO2 emission reductions, as well as saving Russian and Kazakh consumers million of euro.

A 2004 project in Gabrovo is being used as a case study by The Alliance to Save Energy, a US non-government organisation, in their project to raise awareness about residential energy efficiency opportunities in Russia and Eastern Europe. The Gabrovo project, funded by the UNDP/GEF and co-ordinated by the Alliance’s Bulgarian partner, EnEffect and District Heating Gabrovo, sought not only to curtail energy use, but to ease the energy costs on occupants and detail the process of preparation and implementation of energy efficient projects in residential buildings. By weather-stripping windows, replacing entrance doors, installing thermostatic radiator valves and reflector screens behind radiators, and fitting water-saving showers and new energy efficient light bulbs the energy savings amounted to 245 MWh/year of heat and 21 MWh/year of electricity, totalling 41 per cent of the baseline scenario with a four-year payback. Household energy bills were decreased, while the reliability of heat supply increased.

Energy efficiency certainly has come a long way. These projects are just some examples of what can be achieved. I can still remember hours spent with a hair-dryer sealing cling-film over windows as a kind of do-it-yourself double-glazing, so as not to have to turn the heaters up too much – I’m sure my landlord would have disapproved.