EBRD, E5P offer €20mln to finance landfill gas-to-energy facility in Tbilisi

The Georgian capital city of Tbilisi will be able to refurbish existing cells at the Didi Lilo landfill and install a landfill gas collection, flaring and utilisation system with a €20 million funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Eastern Europe Energy Efficiency and Environment Partnership.

The loan and grant agreements were signed on Wednesday by Georgian Finance Minister Lasha Khutsishvili and Nandita Parshad, the Managing Director of Sustainable Infrastructure Group at the EBRD, during the Bank's annual meeting in Yerevan, Armenia.

The EBRD’s €16 million sovereign loan to the Georgian Government and its EBRD-backed Green Cities programme, as well as €4 million grant by the E5P Fund, is set to enable Tbilisi to “continue modernising” its solid waste management and financing infrastructure, converting the gas produced by solid waste into electricity, the EBRD said.

The funding, which makes Tbilisi the city with “the most investments to date” under the EBRD Green Cities programme, aims to improve solid waste services for the city’s 1.5 million citizens and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent, contributing to climate change mitigation.

The production of renewable energy from landfill gas is expected to reach almost 30,000 MWh/year.

As part of the investment, the waste management company of the capital will introduce a staff training programme on preventing and mitigating gender-based violence and harassment risks.

The EBRD has invested more than €5 billion in 293 projects in Georgia’s financial, corporate, infrastructure and energy sectors, with 82 percent of those investments in the private sector.

Donors to the E5P Fund include the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden, the TaiwanBusiness-EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund, the United States of America and the European Union, the largest donor.