SACREEE and EACREEE thriving to support Member States on the Development of Regional Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) amidst COVID-19 pandemic challenges

Besides the challenges posed by COVID-19 pandemic in terms of restriction to organize physical meetings, SACREEE and EACREEE continue supporting the Southern African Development Communities (SADC) and East African Countries (EAC) Member States virtually by addressing the comments provided by the National Technical Committees (TCs) on the draft harmonized MEPS for lighting. A Third Webinar was organized to address these comments and to establish the necessary support required by Member States. More than 100 participants attended the Webinar including the National Focal Points for the Energy Efficient Lighting and Appliances (EELA) from SADC and EAC, Regional TCs, National TCs, Regional and International Experts as well as the Consultants that developed the draft documents.

The preceding two webinars were held on 28 January and 11 February 2020, respectively. The kick-off TC Meetings and these subsequent webinars covered General Service Lamps (GSL), Tubular Lamps, Indoor Ambient Luminaires, Outdoor/Streetlight Luminaires and Off-grid lighting. The Draft MEPS documents each for EAC and SADC were also shared for reviews by the national TCs. The development of Regional MEPS for lighting is carried out with support of the project on EELA in East and Southern Africa implemented by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and EACREEE and the SACREEE. The project is Technical support is provided by the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) and CLASP. The project is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

The specific objective of the Third Webinar was to present and discuss responses on questions or concerns on the regional draft harmonized MEPS for lighting products, share country experiences in preparing to adopt the forthcoming regional harmonized MEPS for lighting at the national level: Kenya, Namibia, Seychelles, Uganda  and Zambia.  The next Product Groups to be discussed is on air conditioning and refrigeration, implemented by UNIDO, SACREEE and EACREEE in collaboration with UN Environment Programme’s United for Efficiency (U4E). The participants were also introduced to the market monitoring, verification, and enforcement (MVE) survey for member countries and finally the agreement on working modalities in the current situation of travel restrictions were discussed.  Several comments or questions were addressed and a detailed document with answers on the questions raised will be provided to participants afterwards.

The participants indicated that the Third EELA Webinar provided opportunity for the member states to go through the feedback provided on the draft of the Harmonized standards for Lighting and have definitely highlighted important issues even to those who had no time to revise the document. Below are quotes from two TC members:

“We managed to make the most of it in the webinar platform irrespective of being locked down.” Ms. Cynthia Alexander from Seychelles.

“The third webinar helps us to understand EAC and SADC harmonized MEPS which will be an important tool for the development of Energy Efficiency at national level. In our country we do not have MEPS and it was wonderful to follow discussion and clarification on the MEPS under elaboration.” Mr. Moise Makuwa from Burundi.

Under normal circumstances, the EELA project had planned to host a physical meeting on the finalisation of the Regional MEPS for lighting alongside the Kigali Energy Forum which was scheduled for 25-28 May 2020 in Kigali, Rwanda. However, this event has since been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more details, please contact SACREEE at energy@sacreee.org  or EACREEE at info@eacreee.org

Further links:

https://www.sacreee.org/content/energy-efficient-lighting-and-appliances-eac-and-sadc-eela

https://www.eacreee.org/project/energy-efficient-lighting-and-appliances-eela-project-southern-and-eastern-africa

https://united4efficiency.org/