On 2 November 2016 Morocco’s National Office of Electricity and Drinking Water and the UN Environment celebrated the installation of their 9 millionth energy-efficient lamp with a special event in Casablanca. The event was part of Morocco’s INARA program, which started 10 years ago, and aims to replace 15 million incandescent lamps with low-energy consumption lamps to promote energy efficiency.
The first phase of INARA was launched in 2007 and ran until 2010. The program supported the installation of 5,000,000 energy-efficient lamps and allowed a cumulative energy of about 2,600 GWh, a reduction of 330 thousand tons of CO2 emissions per year and an annual saving of 110 thousand tonnes of fuel oil.
A second phase, INARA II, financed by the German Bank KfW and a UN Environment grant, was launched in December 2014 to minimise peak energy demand by 330 MW (5.6 per cent of the maximum power demand recorded in 2015) and an energy savings of around 770 GWh per year resulting in an annual saving of 290,000 tonnes of fuel.
According to officials of the National Office, the assessment of the impacts of the first phase confirmed the expected positive effects. Electricity consumption was optimised through a decrease in demand at peak hours. Cumulative energy savings of about 2,600 GWh since the start of the operation, a reduction of CO2 emissions of 330,000 tonnes per year and an annual heating oil savings of 110,000 tonnes were obtained.
United for Efficiency-en.lighten provides policy support to this initiative. More information can be found here.