In partnership with the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) of the World Bank, the Brazilian City of Belo Horizonte will become the first city in Latin America to implement the Tool for Rapid Assessment of City Energy (TRACE), which assesses energy efficiency of six sectors—transportation, public lighting, buildings, power and heat, waste, and water and wastewater.
21 August 2012: A publication released by the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), in partnership with the World Bank, reveals how the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte has taken new strides to enhance energy efficiency.
ESMAP says Belo Horizonte will become the first in Latin America to implement the Tool for Rapid Assessment of City Energy (TRACE), an ESMAP decision-support tool designed to help cities rapidly identify energy efficiency opportunities. The tool has been deployed in fourteen other cities around the world. The implementation project falls under ESMAP’s Energy Efficient Cities Initiative, which promote energy-efficient programs and planning among cities in developing countries.
The tool assesses six sectors—transportation, public lighting, buildings, power and heat, waste, and water and wastewater. In the case of Belo Horizonte, ESMAP describes how, by comparing a city with key performance indicators of peer cities, TRACE is a means to take stock of energy saving sectors city-wide. ESMAP suggests that, emerging from sector prioritization modules and their rankings, TRACE is able to generate recommendations on specific energy efficiency interventions.
ESMAP also reports that, compared to other cities, few energy efficiency savings were to be found in Belo Horizonte’s power sector, since technical and commercial losses were already some of the lowest in the world. Of those sectors that could be improved, the greatest potential efficiency gains were found in the transport sector, improvement of water utilities, and optimization of waste collection destined for landfills. [Press Release]