The Tunisian Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) aims to reduce carbon intensity of its GDP by 41 per cent by 2030 compared to the base year 2010. These mitigation efforts will be mainly channelled through five NAMAs, including one from the building sector. Energy consumption in the building sector represents 22 per cent of the final energy consumption, which justifies the position of this sector at the core of Tunisia’s National Strategy against Climate Change, adopted in 2012. This consumption is expected to increase to 35 per cent by 2030 due to population growth and rising living standards in Tunisia.
Several independent programmes and regulations are already in place to increase the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency in the sector: the PROSOL programme which aims at promoting the use of solar water heaters (SWH) since 2005, and the PROSOL ELEC programme which supports installations of photovoltaic (PV) systems in residential buildings since 2010. These programmes are still facing financial, technical and communication-related challenges that prevent them from reaching their full scale-up. The launch of a thermal performance programme (PROMO ISOL) is planned but has not yet materialised due to a lack of capacity and financial support.
The wider ‘NAMA for renewable energy and energy efficiency in the building sector in Tunisia’ (‘Building NAMA’), aims at increasing the uptake of energy efficiency and renewable energy measures across the building sector through the scaling-up of PROSOL and PROSOL ELEC and the launching of PROMO ISOL. In this NAMA context, the related NSP will address barriers such as insufficient access to capital, insufficient technical and institutional capacities and low awareness. The proposed NSP aims at fostering this up-scaling and transformation of the sector, as sought by the Building NAMA, in its initial phase of implementation via the three following components: