An analysis of the legal, financial and institutional gaps in the draft NEESAP
Introduction
The National Energy Efficiency Strategy and Action Plan (NEESAP) is Zimbabwe’s draft national strategy for cutting energy waste and improving energy productivity across the economy. It is built around eight strategic objectives, spanning the enabling legal framework, industry and mining, the electricity supply chain, appliances and clean cooking, buildings, transport, agriculture, and data and monitoring systems, and a forty-four action implementation plan sequenced across short, medium and long-term horizons, with the Ministry of Energy and Power Development as lead institution and custodian.
NEESAP is, on its own terms, an ambitious document. Its strategic objectives are comprehensive, and its implementation architecture is detailed. What follows is an analysis of eight specific points at which that ambition is not yet matched by legal, financial or institutional detail: a sequencing problem between NEESAP and an instrument already in force, a set of national policy documents mentioned once and never cross-referenced again, an undefined but central market actor, a financing mechanism that exists in name only, an entire financing pathway omitted altogether, two distinct gaps in public participation, and the absence of a sector-specific target for one of the economy’s most energy-intensive industries. Each is examined in turn below, before being read together as a pattern in the conclusion.
Issue 1: S.I. 122 of 2026 and the sequencing problem
NEESAP’s own Legal and Regulatory Framework section describes a clear sequence: the forthcoming Energy Efficiency Act is meant to come first, establishing the legal architecture, institutional mandates, the definition of an Energy Service Company (ESCO), mandatory audit obligations and enforcement powers, with Energy Management Regulations to follow afterward to operationalise that framework. But Statutory Instrument 122 of 2026, the Electricity (Energy Management) Regulations,[1] has already been gazetted, ahead of the Act NEESAP itself says should come first. NEESAP’s action plan for Strategic Objective 1 does not acknowledge that S.I. 122 already exists, or address the sequencing problem this creates; it continues to describe the Act as the instrument that will establish the very institutional mandates and enforcement powers S.I. 122 is already relying on in practice.
This is a live legal problem, not a drafting nicety. Regulations are subordinate instruments that derive their authority from an enabling Act, yet S.I. 122 imposes energy management obligations on designated facilities, references a revolving energy savings fund, and opens the door to carbon finance funding, all without the statutory foundation NEESAP’s own sequencing contemplates. The appropriate fix is for the Strategic Objective 1 action plan to state explicitly that S.I. 122 and related instruments are transitional measures made under existing powers, pending enactment of the Energy Efficiency Act, so that designated-facility obligations rest on an adequate statutory foundation. Until this is resolved, every designated facility complying with S.I. 122 today is complying with an instrument whose statutory foundation is contestable, precisely the kind of regulatory uncertainty that undermines investor and lender confidence in energy efficiency and low-carbon finance.
Issue 2: The missing cross-reference to the Integrated Resource Plan and the National Energy Policy
NEESAP’s Situational Analysis and SWOT section mentions, in a single paragraph, that Zimbabwe developed a National Integrated Energy Resource Plan with a forty-five year planning horizon in 2025, and separately that the National Energy Compact targets universal electricity access by 2030. Neither instrument is mentioned again anywhere in the Strategic Objectives, the Energy Efficiency Action Plan, or the Implementation Framework. The National Energy Policy, defined in the abbreviations table as “NEP,” is never used again anywhere in the document body. Both instruments are treated as background context, rather than as documents NEESAP’s own targets and investment sequencing should be actively cross-referenced against.
The fix is for NEESAP to substantively cross-reference the Integrated Resource Plan’s generation and grid investment horizon within the electricity supply-chain actions under Strategic Objective 3, and to clarify explicitly how NEESAP relates to, and is sequenced against, the National Energy Policy, stating plainly that both remain in draft and indicating how the two processes will be reconciled if their provisions diverge. A national efficiency strategy that is not visibly anchored to the country’s own long-horizon generation and grid investment plan risks setting targets and investment priorities that quietly diverge from where the grid itself is actually headed, weakening the coherence regulators and financiers need across Zimbabwe’s energy planning documents.
Issue 3: The ESCO definition gap
NEESAP recognises the role of Energy Service Companies in delivering efficiency investment, but defers the definition of an ESCO to future legislation, and is silent on the institutional architecture needed to operationalise an ESCO market in the meantime. This leaves “ESCO” undefined in the very document meant to be the country’s primary efficiency strategy. The appropriate fix is for NEESAP itself to adopt a working definition now rather than deferring it entirely to the Energy Efficiency Act: an ESCO as a business that delivers energy efficiency projects financed on the basis of the energy savings achieved, typically underpinned by an Energy Performance Contract that commits the ESCO to installing the necessary equipment, provides a performance guarantee, and sets the terms of payment tied to the verified savings realised,[2] alongside sufficient further detail on the institutional architecture an ESCO market requires. Without a working definition now, banks, financiers and companies have nothing concrete to structure ESCO contracts or financing against until the Act is eventually passed, stalling exactly the private-sector-led efficiency investment NEESAP is designed to unlock.
Issue 4: The financing gap between ESCO provisions and the S.I. 122 revolving fund
NEESAP’s Activity ID8 treats a revolving fund as only one hypothetical financing option among several, alongside concessional credit lines, guarantee arrangements, results-based support and blended finance, for overcoming ESCO market access-to-finance barriers. S.I. 122 of 2026, by contrast, refers to a revolving energy savings fund as though it is already an established mechanism, without any accompanying instrument creating the fund, appointing an administering body, or identifying a source of capital. NEESAP does not clarify whether the fund referenced in S.I. 122 and the revolving fund option contemplated under Activity ID8 are intended to be the same instrument.
The fix is to clarify this directly, and to formally establish the fund on a proper statutory footing, including its capitalisation, eligibility criteria and administering body, drawing on the precedent of India’s Energy Conservation Act, 2001, which established a Central Energy Conservation Fund on a clear statutory basis.[3] A complementary instrument worth considering alongside the fund is a South African-style Energy Efficiency Tax Incentive, a tax deduction for independently verified energy savings,[4] which, unlike a fund, requires no upfront capitalisation and could be introduced without waiting for the fund’s formal establishment. An ambiguous, uncapitalised fund cannot actually finance anything; left unresolved, this gap stalls efficiency and renewable investment at exactly the point where NEESAP most needs private capital to move.
Issue 5: The missing link to carbon finance
NEESAP’s Resource Mobilisation and Financing section discusses national budget resources, development partner support, and private capital mobilised through public-private partnerships, blended finance and results-based financing. At no point in the full text of NEESAP is there any reference to carbon credits, carbon finance, carbon markets, or Zimbabwe’s own Carbon Trading (General) Regulations, S.I. 48 of 2025.[5] This omits an entire, already-existing domestic financing pathway from NEESAP’s own financing chapter. The fix is for the Resource Mobilisation and Financing section to explicitly reference the Carbon Trading Regulations as an available financing pathway for verified energy efficiency savings. Zimbabwe already has a functioning carbon trading regulatory framework; not linking it to the country’s main efficiency strategy leaves a real, existing financing tool sitting unused, an odd gap given how central carbon finance has become to the just energy transition elsewhere in Zimbabwe’s own policy landscape.
Issue 6: Public participation in finalising NEESAP
It is not clear from NEESAP or its accompanying process documentation whether the second stakeholder validation mission and workshop were open to broader civil society and community participation, beyond the institutional stakeholders and development partners typically convened at such workshops. NEESAP does not document a standing public participation requirement for its own finalisation, or for the future development of the Energy Efficiency Act and its regulations. The fix is to ensure that both the NEESAP process, for example at its five-year review marks, and the future development of the Energy Efficiency Act and its regulations, for example publication of draft Bills and regulations for public comment before finalisation, include a standing, documented public participation requirement. Public participation is not a courtesy extended at a Ministry’s discretion; it is how affected stakeholders test whether a strategy works in practice and exercise their interest in decisions that will shape national energy costs and access, and without a documented mechanism, that test cannot happen.
Issue 7: Public participation in implementing NEESAP
The National Energy Efficiency Committee established under the CEPA framework does not currently guarantee civil society representation alongside government entities, structuring implementation oversight around government entities without a clear standing channel for independent technical, legal or policy expertise. The California Energy Efficiency Coordinating Committee offers a working comparator: it provides a venue for stakeholders, including non-profits focused on decarbonisation, to discuss energy efficiency matters under the purview of the California Public Utilities Commission while ensuring transparent access to information and opportunities to get involved.[6] The fix is for the National Energy Efficiency Committee to include civil society stakeholders with technical, legal or policy expertise in decarbonisation. An implementation committee without independent expertise risks losing exactly the kind of scrutiny that keeps efficiency programmes honest and adaptive as they roll out over the coming decade.
Issue 8: No specific target for the mining sector
NEESAP appears to include only high-level efficiency targets for industry generally, with no target specific to mining, despite mining accounting for a significant share of Zimbabwe’s energy-intensive final consumption. It does not disaggregate an industry-wide target down to the mining sector specifically, unlike comparator countries: South Africa’s Draft Post-2015 National Energy Efficiency Strategy, for example, sets a target of a cumulative total annual energy saving of 40 petajoules arising from specific energy-saving interventions undertaken by mining companies.[7] The fix is for Zimbabwe to set an explicit energy efficiency target for its own mining sector. Given how energy-intensive Zimbabwe’s mining and mineral-processing sector already is, and how much more energy-intensive it is set to become as beneficiation scales up toward the 2027 deadline, a strategy without a mining-specific target is leaving its single largest demand-side opportunity unaddressed.
Conclusion: Reading the Issues as a Whole
Put together, the eight issues resolve into three patterns worth reading together rather than issue by issue. First, a sequencing problem repeats itself: NEESAP describes an orderly process in which the Energy Efficiency Act comes first and a finalised National Energy Policy and Integrated Resource Plan sit alongside it, but reality has already moved out of that order, S.I. 122 exists, and both national policy instruments remain in draft, and NEESAP’s own text has not yet caught up to that reality.
Second, a financing-definition gap repeats itself: ESCOs remain undefined, a revolving fund is referenced but never actually established, and an entire carbon finance pathway is left out of the financing chapter altogether. Taken together, the private capital NEESAP is counting on to deliver its ambition currently has very little concrete structure to attach to.
Third, a participation gap repeats itself: neither NEESAP’s own finalisation process nor its ongoing implementation Committee currently guarantee a documented, standing seat for the communities and civil society actors the strategy is ultimately meant to serve.
None of this requires rewriting NEESAP’s underlying ambition. Each of these eight fixes addresses sequencing, definition or process, and each is achievable within the existing draft, rather than a challenge to the strategy Zimbabwe has set out to pursue.
[1]S.I. 122 of 2026, the Electricity (Energy Management) Regulations.
[2]International Energy Agency, “Energy Service Companies (ESCOs)”, available at https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-service-companies-escos-2.
[3]India, Energy Conservation Act, 2001.
[4]South Africa, Income Tax Act 58 of 1962, s 12L (energy efficiency savings tax incentive).
[5]Zimbabwe, Carbon Trading (General) Regulations, 2025, Statutory Instrument 48 of 2025, made under the Environmental Management Act [Chapter 20:27], Government Gazette, 2 May 2025 (repealing Statutory Instrument 150 of 2023).
[6]California Energy Efficiency Coordinating Committee, Welcome to the California Energy Efficiency Coordinating Committee, available at https://www.caeecc.org/.
[7]Department of Energy (South Africa), Draft Post-2015 National Energy Efficiency Strategy (23 December 2016), available at https://cer.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/National-Energy-Efficiency-Strategy.pdf.