The project “National Energy Balance in Terms of Useful Energy for Paraguay’s Commercial Sector,” funded by the European Union’s EUROCLIMA program with support from AECID, is in its final implementation phase. This initiative builds upon another project executed between 2020 and 2023. In September 2024, the fieldwork phase concluded successfully, with the primary goal of gathering information on energy consumption and flows in the commercial, services, and public sectors of the Republic of Paraguay.
In summary, 432 surveys were conducted out of an official sample of 472 establishments, categorized into the following subsectors: Wholesale Trade; Retail Trade; Hotels and Restaurants; Education, Health, and Social Assistance; Public Administration and Defense; Water and Sanitation; and Other Services.
The collected data is being analyzed and processed by the project’s technical team to produce the useful energy balance for the described sectors and update the useful energy balances developed during the previous project, which covered the industrial, residential, and transportation sectors.
The next phase of this project will include two components: training and knowledge transfer targeted at officials from national institutions responsible for energy planning, and a panel discussion during the IX Energy Week, where beneficiary countries (Ecuador, Panama, and Paraguay) will present and discuss the impact and necessity of a useful energy balance from their perspectives.
The training and knowledge transfer will take place on October 24 and 25, while the panel discussion is scheduled for Wednesday, October 30. It is worth highlighting that hosting this panel within the context of an event like Energy Week brings international attention to the importance of energy information and its implications, uses, and potential in terms of energy planning and as a driver of energy efficiency.
This project includes the following milestones:
- Developing the useful energy balance for Paraguay’s commercial, services, and public sectors.
- Updating the useful energy balance for Paraguay’s industrial, residential, and transportation sectors.
- Updating OLACDE’s Useful Energy Balance Methodology based on the implementation experience of this project and its scaling.
- Training officials from various public entities in the development of sectoral useful energy balances.
- Highlighting the importance, benefits, challenges, and results of this type of project in a high-level panel during the IX Energy Week.
- Producing a document outlining key energy efficiency actions that a country can undertake based on the information obtained through a useful energy balance.
About Euroclima
Euroclima is a program funded by the European Union and co-financed by the German Federal Government through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), as well as by the governments of France and Spain through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union, and Cooperation.
The program’s mission is to reduce the impact of climate change and its effects in 33 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, promoting mitigation, adaptation, resilience, climate investment, and biodiversity. This is implemented under the “Team Europe Spirit” through the synergistic work of seven agencies: the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the AFD Group: French Development Agency (AFD)/ Expertise France (EF), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
