Electricity based projects.

It is clear that nowadays one of the major environmental problems that we’re facing is an energy related problem. Indeed, Article 2 of the Kyoto protocol emphasizes:

• the importance of energy efficiency (Article 2/ 1-a-i),
• development and promotion of new renewable forms of energy (Article 2/ 1-a-iv).

Tunisia is collaborating with Annex I countries (mainly developed countries) in different energy related fields. One of these fields is the Technology collaboration for appliances. A practical application is to upgrade refrigerator manufacturing plants. Notice that there are twelve plants manufacturing refrigerators in Tunisia. Most of them are simply assembling kits delivered by foreign countries’ manufacturers while others produce original appliances with their own design using diverse components available on the world market. Knowing that Tunisia has a population of 9.8 million people with a 1.1% annual population growth rate, we should expect an increase in energy consumption. Indeed, Tunisia had 6.8% annual growth in electricity demand since 1980, of which 25% was consumed in the residential sector. Refrigerators consume as much as 40% of the latter. This consumption could quadruple by 2030. Tunisia’s recent improvement in energy efficiency of its cold appliances market has benefited consumers and enhanced the industry’s competitiveness. This is still an on going process. Indeed, Tunisia has an agreement for free trade with Europe coming into force in 2008. This process will probably initiate major changes in the sector.

Having said that, the second collaboration field is related to renewable energies. In its 10th Plan (2003-2007), Tunisia has focused on the development of On-grid Wind Electricity as a renewable source of energy. The ANER is in charge to execute the project. The objective of the Full Project is to target both large-scale on-grid production of wind energy and small-scale off-grid production units in remote rural settings. Tunisia has also announced the future installation of an additional 200MW on-grid wind power plant within its 11th plan (2008-2011), thus adopting a long-term program approach in order to maximize private sector participation on a self-sustaining commercial basis. The benefits of the above capacity increases could be substantial to the country, stimulating to the wind power industry and the global environment, but only if accompanied with targeted foreign direct investments (FDI) to drive-in the expected private sector capital and technical "know-how".