Former US president Bill Clinton announced the new Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program set up by his Foundation at the C-40 Large Cities Climate Summit in New York. Under the project, 16 cities (among them London, New York, Berlin, Mexico, Rome, Bangkok, Seoul and others) will upgrade their existing buildings with more efficient heating, cooling and lightning systems to reduce energy consumption and prevent climate-gas emissions.
Five global banks (ABN Amro, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorganChase and UBS) will each provide $1 billion loans for the project, which will be paid back from the savings gained on the energy bills. Major companies such as Johnson Controls and Honeywell will manage and audit the retro-fitting work.
In another partnership presented during the conference, Microsoft and the C40 Large Cities group announced that the software giant will develop tools to enable cities to monitor, compare and reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions.
