Motivating households to invest in energy efficiency
It is a privilege to contribute to the final Challenger issued during the Kosovo Threshold Program, focused on the Subsidies for Energy Efficiency – Kosovo (SEEK) Program. MCC and MFK designed this program more than five years ago with a goal of learning as much as possible about what motivates households to invest in energy efficiency measures and what model the Government of Kosovo could scale up effectively. Through the program we’ve now tested three different models for investing in household energy retrofits, and we’ve renovated almost 1,000 individual households across the country, as well as 26 apartment buildings with over 600 households. With each iteration of the program, different approaches to the subsidy, application, and retrofitting process taught us what worked well and what didn’t, helping us develop a set of recommendations for how to maximize the impact of future energy efficiency investments.
As the program comes to an end, we’re proud of the impact these investments have had – in the short term, reducing the energy consumption needs for thousands of citizens and raising awareness about the many benefits of energy efficiency measures. We are hopeful that with the learning from our pilot programs, Kosovo’s government can easily expand energy efficiency investments on an even larger scale, with citizens, Government, and the climate all reaping the benefits for years to come.