About Smiles

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The Maldives depends entirely on imported fossil fuels to meet its energy demand. The SMILES project ( Strengthening Maldivian Initiatives for a Long-term Energy Strategy) is aimed at supporting the Maldivian government initiatives to formulate and implement a sustainable energy policy through both demand side and supply side management strategies. With co-funding from the European Commission under the Asia Pro Eco Programme , this project can be considered as a local contribution to the mitigation of global warming.

European know-how and expertise will be shared with the Maldives for developing policies and strategies to lower its rapid growth in fossil fuel demand while ensuring energy access to more remote and less economically advantaged islands . The project will help enhancing the capacity of the relevant stakeholders to adopt measures, technologies and practices for attaining sustainable energy development goals .

Specific targets under the project include increasing the efficiency of energy generation and its utilization in the power sector (activity 1) , lowering the import rate of fossil fuels by exploiting renewable energies, (activity 2) and improving efficiency of the transport sector (activity 3) .