BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 2. The World Bank (WB) has issued the first loan under the Europe and Central Asia renewable energy incentive program, Trend reports.
The initial stage of WB's 10-year program designated for accelerating the market transition for distributed energy—Europe and Central Asia Renewable Energy Scale-up (ECARES) program has started.
"The Board approved today a pioneering $2 billion initiative to enhance energy security and affordability by scaling up renewable energy in emerging and developing economies in the Europe and Central Asia region," the WB said.
The ECARES uses a multiphase programmatic approach (MPA) to scale up renewable energy in the 23 emerging and developing economies of Europe and Central Asia, and Türkiye became the first recipient of funding under it.
"Future projects under the program are expected in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan," the WB noted.
According to the WB, the program will be anchored in three complementary pillars of activities: enabling policies and institutional frameworks, investments to develop flexible electricity networks, and financing and risk mitigation instruments for clean energy investments.
"The ECARES program has a strong focus on expanding finance for renewable energy, especially from the private sector and climate, and aims to enable, in the first phase, the addition of 15 GW of renewable energy capacity (enough to charge 650 million electric cars every year) and reduce 240 million metric tons of carbon emissions (equivalent to avoiding the combustion of 100 billion liters of gasoline)," the bank pointed out.
Besides, the program is expected to leverage $6 billion in private capital financing.
The first project under the ECARES initiative, approved by the WB Board in late March, is a $657 million financing facility for the Accelerating the Market Transition for Distributed Energy project in Türkiye, in support of the country’s goal of adding 60 GW of solar and wind power by 2035.
In this regard, WB Vice President for the Europe and Central Asia region, Antonella Bassani said that “at the World Bank Group, we are committed to helping countries develop the enabling framework and initial investments needed to attract private capital in the scale up of renewable energy.”