Energizing Finance 2018 Briefing

Join a special webinar setting out the findings of our latest report, Energizing Finance: Understanding the Landscape 2018, which was launched on November 13, 2018 in Dakar, Senegal. The report represents a pioneering effort to examine the finance flows that would help close the energy access gap for the one billion people who live without electricity and 3 billion that live without clean cooking. The report’s findings focuses on the 20 countries that represent nearly 80% of the global access gaps.

The Energizing Finance report series, which was first launched to positive feedback in 2017, provides a first-of-its-kind, systematic analysis of finance flows into two key areas of energy access: electricity and clean cooking. The series offers key insights for partners and stakeholders, and makes recommendations to governments, financial institutions and private sector stakeholders to help unlock new finance and improve energy access rates. The 2018 report is the second in the report series and provides an update to the 2017 report, tracking finance flows in 20 designated High-Impact Countries (HICs) with the world’s largest energy access gaps, concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The Energizing Finance report series is the product of a research partnership between SEforALL and the Climate Policy Initiative.

The 2018 report demonstrates that finance for electricity and clean cooking is still not on track to meet universal energy access by 2030 as laid out in UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7). Absolute flows of finance commitments to HICs for electricity access show a positive trend but remain only slightly above 50% of the finance required to meet SDG7. Moreover, these commitments are highly concentrated geographically and are largely allocated to medium or higher tiers of energy access. On the other hand, finance commitments for access to residential clean cooking solutions show a negative trend and highlight the need for an urgent paradigm shift in how the global community approaches clean cooking.

Insights from this research will continue to shape our strategies on energy access. In our efforts to support you in your work, we have designed this webinar series for our partners to share insights from our work. The Energizing Finance webinar is the first instalment in the series.

AGENDA

• Introduction and welcome remarks (Stuart Neil, Director of Communications, SEforALL)
• Key findings and messages (Olivia Coldrey, Lead Finance Specialist, SEforALL)
• Question and answer session