14 March 2013: The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) and the Clean Energy Ministerial’s (CEM) Super-efficient Equipment and Appliance Deployment (SEAD) initiative have begun implementing activities under a partnership to develop a regional system of energy efficiency standards and labels for appliances.

The aim of the partnership is to help ECOWAS achieve its goals of doubling the region’s annual energy efficiency improvement by 2020. SEAD’s technical and analytical support includes: calculating potential energy savings; analyzing and proposing cost-effective policies for standards and labels; and assessing institutional and legal capacities and frameworks. It is expected that the ECOWAS region could save up to 60 terawatt hours of electricity per year by 2030, nearly the total amount of energy consumed in the region in 2011, via the adoption of best practices for appliances.

The partnership is part of the ECOWAS Policy on Energy Efficiency, adopted in October 2012, which aims to mitigate peak loads and related causes of power cuts and load shedding, offering opportunities to redirect energy and financial savings to rural electrification projects, and to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission released by using fossil fuels for electricity generation. The project also fits under the regional implementation framework of the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative. [CEM Press Release] [IISD RS Reporting on ECOWAS, SEAD Partnership] [IISD RS Reporting on ECOWAS Policy on Energy Efficiency]