An “energy performance” insurance that guarantees the return on investment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in energy efficiency projects and photovoltaic generation facilities, minimising the risk of small entrepreneurs to adopt these initiatives. This is the proposal of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), which on Wednesday launched the ESI (Energy Savings Insurance) Programme, aimed at boosting these segments.

The program includes pre-project monitoring, equipment installation and performance measurement for up to five years. This support is carried out in partnership with the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT).

According to projections by the Brazilian Association of Photovoltaic Solar Energy (Absolar), investments in photovoltaic solar power should exceed 22.6 billion of reales in 2021, adding the resources allocated to large plants – centralised generation – and smaller systems installed on rooftops, building facades and small plots of land, also known as distributed generation.

In the distributed generation segment alone, the target of most of the SME projects, Absolar estimates investments 17.2 billion of reales, with a forecast growth of 90% in installed capacity, up to 8.3 GW.