New innovative ideas to stimulate investment in Clean Energy

The pre-selection panel of Finance for Resilience has revealed a list of 12 promising ideas to accelerate the flow of finance for clean energy worldwide. Finance for Resilience (‘FiRe’) is a non-profit initiative run alongside the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit which aims to identify promising interventions based on scale and feasibility. The panel convened on 14 March to choose 12 finalists from 26 initial submissions. These will be invited to present at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit, when the six winners will be selected.

FiRe targets interventions that would stimulate new investment at the $1bn-a-year level, or higher. The chosen ideas show innovative approaches for tackling barriers to financing clean energy projects or technologies, anywhere in the world. They include public-private capital provision, insurance for power purchase agreements, bringing green bonds into the mainstream and other instruments. They are split into three streams: i) Risk management, ii) Scale & aggregation, iii) Securitisation.

The 12 finalists will pitch the ideas at the forthcoming Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit, which takes place at the Grand Hyatt in New York, 7 to 9 April 2014. Summit attendees will vote for six overall winners, develop the ideas further in dedicated break-out sessions and participate in the future progress of the intervention. The core FiRe team will track progress until the next Summit in April 2015 and beyond.

Michael Liebreich, chair of Finance for Resilience, said, “The pre-selection panel had a very tough job, whittling down 26 excellent entries to the 12 which will present at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit. These ideas have real potential to increase the flow of finance to clean energy at scale. What is particularly exciting is that most of these ideas revolve around private finance, supported by limited public money, and no subsidies. Investors are really asking for barriers to be removed, in order to develop new billion-dollar investment channels. The next stage is crucial – we must turn the best of these ideas into action.”

Janis Hoberg, project leader for Finance for Resilience, said, “I was impressed by the level of creativity of the submissions. The top 12 have a global focus covering developed and emerging markets. They address the need for financial innovation, the structural challenges of the energy market and the unique problems of energy access in the developing world. We are excited to help them contribute to a cleaner energy future.”