European Energy Efficiency Fund enters into cooperation with Romanian Banca Transilvania

European Energy Efficiency Fund (eeef) and Banca Transilvania (BT): BT signed on 27 September 2013 a letter of intent regarding green lending. It is the first cooperation of the eeef with a financial institution and also eeef’s first project in Eastern Europe to support energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) investments.

With BT, eeef wins a strong local partner with credentials in financing several energy efficiency projects, which has a strong footprint in financing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Banca Transilvania is the 3rd largest Romanian bank, by assets. This co-operation will help to strengthen the Romanian banking sector by providing financing to EE and smaller-scale RE projects, primarily through the provision of financing to public and private building owners, homeowner / condominium associations and municipalities, public sector entities and private sector companies acting on behalf of the public sector. eeef will support BT in sourcing and evaluating the projects. BT will ensure that financed projects comply with eeef’s requirements with respect to CO2 emission / primary energy consumption reduction of at least 20%. Further, eeef may jointly finance projects with BT in case larger financing amounts are required.

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.