City of Venlo is upgrading 73% of its public lighting via a senior debt facility provided by the eeef
Venlo – the City of Venlo and the European Energy Efficiency Fund (eeef) signed a long-term financing contract for EUR8.5mio on 03 April 2014. The senior loan to be provided will be used by the City for the financing of street lighting upgrades with an objective to equip a minimum of 16,000 lighting points with LED lights (73% of the total lighting points of the City) and achieve 62% in energy savings.
The City of Venlo has 100,000 inhabitants and is among the first cities in the Netherlands that started to work on climate- and energy-programmes back in 2004. The existing public lighting is the largest consumer of electricity (approx 36%) on its electricity-bill, thus the City prioritized its focus of street lighting upgrade to reduce energy consumption as well as CO2 emissions and save costs for the public budget. A further sign for the City’s commitment towards environmental sustainability is that Venlo is embracing the principle of ‘Cradle to Cradle’ (C2C) as one of the first cities worldwide. C2C is a framework for going beyond conventional sustainability and designing for abundance and added value. It focuses on the use of sustainable energy only, thus phasing out all conventional energy sources.
This earmarked funding for street lighting upgrades is linked to the preparation works resulting from Technical Assistance financed by the Technical Assistant facility provided by the European Commission and should allow the City to tender and select the equipment manufacturer to deliver the LED equipment.
The European Energy Efficiency Fund S.A., SICAV-SIF is a “société d’investissement à capital variable” governed by Luxembourg law and was initiated by the European Commission in cooperation with the European Investment Bank. The initial capitalization provided by the European Commission was increased with contributions from the sponsors European Investment Bank, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti as well as the Investment Manager Deutsche Bank.