The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with 11 Aqaba-based hotels within its JD3 million hotel support program to enable them to implement energy conservation and rationalization projects. The memorandum was signed by the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jordan Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Fund (JREEEF) Saleh Kharabsheh, and representatives of hotels participating in the Tourism Sector Energy Efficiency Program (TSEEP). The first phase of the program will cost an estimated JD1.25 million to be split between by the fund and the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA). Kharabsheh stressed, in a press statement after the signing, the importance of the programs implemented by the JREEEF in achieving its goals which intersect with the objectives of the National Plan for Energy Efficiency, including cutting hotels’ energy consumption, increasing their competitiveness and improving the quality of their services. He lauded the importance of the partnership between the Ministry and the Authority in implementing the project within the recently-launched National Plan for Energy Efficiency. The TSEEP, he continued, is a sustainable breakthrough to implement programs and projects aimed at rationalizing energy and energy efficiency in the sectors of industry, tourism and private hospitals. Kharabsheh indicated that the fund implemented a project to support the energy consumption rationalization program in hotels in the Petra area, which resulted in reducing the energy bill in the targeted hotels by 60 percent. For his part, Head of the ASEZA Nayef Fayez stressed the importance of implementing the project in partnership with the energy fund in the ministry, in light of the great challenge that Aqaba hotels face, including high electricity bills, underscoring commitment to continue cooperation with the fund. Elaborating further on the project, Rasmi Hamza, Executive Director of the JREEEF, said that the total cost of the project amounts to JD3 million, which will be channeled into three phases, pointing out that the project is the first of its kind to be financed according to the ESCOs system in the Kingdom, which is an internationally approved method that follows the best global environmental and financial practices. The program is implemented under the supervision of the fund, which offers hotels a grant from the fund and the authority, in addition to a grant for the implementation of energy audit assessments by specialized companies funded by the United Nations Development Program. These projects will save operating costs for hotels estimated at nearly a quarter of a million Jordanian dinars annually and 760 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. For his part, Director of Environment and Climate Change Programs at the United Nations Development Program Nidal Aouran pointed out the importance of a participatory approach to work with the fund by providing support for the implementation of the project to enable Aqaba hotels to increase the volume of their investments, and rationalize energy in their daily work, stressing the program’s continued support for national efforts to mitigate the environmental impact of hotels. The United Nations Development Program had provided a JD100,000 grant to implement detailed energy audit assessments for the 11 hotels participating in the project within the best international practices in the field, by adopting the latest technologies and providing logistical and technical support in partnership with the Fund.
Source: Jordan News Agency