Nepal is facing an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions. The electricity generation capacity managed by Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) is insufficient to meet demand, leading to frequent power outages. Though the government has been highly effective in expanding energy access – from 28% in 2000 to 69% in 2010 and 94% in 2020 – around 1.7 million Nepalis still do not have access to modern energy, and over 73.5% of the population relies on traditional biomass for cooking (as of 2019).

Addressing the energy crisis by accelerating the deployment of modern renewable energy solutions, both on- and off-grid, is a high priority for the Government of Nepal, as the country aims to achieve universal electrification by 2030. Many communities that remain off the grid are in remote, mountainous areas where small-scale clean energy generation is the only viable solution for electrification.

However, the universal access goal cannot be reached with public and donor funding alone, and the government aims to help the energy sector access new sources of financing through a shift from ‘aid to trade’ and from ‘subsidy to credit’.

In 2005, Indian government data showed that almost 90% of households in the state of Bihar were not connected to the conventional grid. Bihar is also the state with one of the greatest numbers of people below the poverty line, where populations in both rural and urban centres were forced to spend a large part of their income on alternative sources of energy like kerosene and diesel generators.

Since then, there has been extensive focus on rural electrification in India. As per the India Residential Energy Consumption Survey (IRES) 2020, as many as 97% of Indian households are electrified, with 96.7% now connected to the grid and another 0.33% relying on off-grid electricity sources. However, 2.4% of Indian households still remain unelectrified. The majority of the unelectrified households are concentrated in rural areas, including Bihar, where 2.2% of households are without electricity (Agrawal, et al., 2020).

As a driving force in this energy transition, SELCO – supported by REEEP in our 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th programmatic cycles between 2006 – 2015 – has become one of India’s best-known social enterprises, seeking to eradicate poverty by promoting sustainable technologies in rural India.

In 2021, Cambodia had an estimated population of 16.6 million people, including 10 million people in rural areas. The country’s agricultural sector, which employs 37% of the Cambodian labour force, is highly dependent on monsoon rains and the annual flooding of the Tonle Sap Lake and therefore extremely vulnerable to climate change as well as dam building projects upstream on the Mekong River. In recent years Cambodian farms have had difficulty competing internationally, partly because grid electricity is expensive, unreliable and not universally accessible.

Clean energy technology offers a reliable and affordable alternative, but the absence of flexible finance instruments for renewable energy technology investments coupled with low levels of end-user knowledge and trust in renewable energy caused low-adoption rates across the country for decades.

The Clean Energy Revolving Fund (CERF) was created by Nexus for Development to tackle this challenge. The innovative financial model began with an initial investment from REEEP with support from the Austrian Government and the Blue Moon Fund. It ran from 2016 to 2019 and offered affordable loans to farmers and small and medium agri-businesses (SMAs) for the purchase of clean energy technologies which increase farmers’ productivity, resilience and regional competitiveness by helping them to manage electricity costs and contribute to climate change mitigation. This in turn reduced CO2 emissions, encouraged an early shift away from fossil fuel-based energy, and increased food processing productivity.

Street lighting represents a significant proportion of energy consumption in India, and the burden of providing the service falls on the electricity boards of each state. In several municipalities, the electricity consumed is not metered, and this provides no incentive for municipalities to improve efficiency. Furthermore, utilities have to offer street lighting electricity cheaply, resulting in financial losses, which in turn prevent them from investing in a more sustainable lighting system.

Starting in the mid-00s, REEEP worked extensively in India for several years to integrate clean energy into large-scale infrastructure. In 2005, REEEP, together with municipal corporations and the energy service company, Central Discom, supported the development of a sustainable financing mechanism for the implementation of energy-efficient street light projects in the state of Madhya Pradesh as part of REEEP’s third programme cycle in 2005/6.

In Fiji, where tourism is the largest industry and estimated to account for a quarter of the nation’s economy, there was strong potential at the end of the 2000s for a sectoral approach that coordinated the efforts of all major tourism stakeholders to achieve collective energy savings and reduce costs.

In 2009, REEEP provided funding to an Australian-based clean technology specialist, Greenlight Technology Group, to develop a structured marketplace for energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) services and technologies tailored to Fiji’s hotel and resort sector and to provide instruction on the financing opportunities available under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the time for small-scale energy efficiency projects.

The RETScreen Clean Energy Management Software platform enables low-carbon planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting. Developed by the Government of Canada in collaboration with government and multilateral organizations, RETScreen Expert, an advanced version of the software, is the world’s leading clean energy decision-making tool. RETScreen Expert incorporates benchmark, feasibility, performance and portfolio analysis for various types of facilities, including commercial, institutional, residential, industrial and power generation, all within one comprehensive platform. By helping to break down barriers to the development of clean energy, RETScreen allows decision-makers and professionals to determine if a proposed clean energy project makes sense and to track facility performance and emission reduction efforts.

As of April 2023, RETScreen is used by more than 800,000 energy, facility and sustainability professionals around the world. The software is available in 38 languages, covering 2/3rds of the world’s population and is used by over 1,400 colleges and universities worldwide.

As the population grows and the climate changes, these farmers will need to meet the growing demand for food while building their resilience to changes in rainfall patterns. Irrigation can provide this resilience while increasing farmers’ incomes, as it allows for growing high-value, nutritious vegetables such as tomatoes and cabbage. The expansion of irrigation capacity in Kenya has thus far been dominated by traditional pumps powered by diesel or petrol. These cause pollution and leave farmers vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of fuel. Irrigation in general – and Solar Powered Irrigation Systems (or SPIS) in particular – can provide substantial benefits to local prosperity in regions that adopt them. The most direct benefit is the increased revenue and income that comes with the greater yields of irrigated cropland vis-à-vis rain-fed land. Stable water supplies allow additional growing seasons per year, massively increasing output.

Drip irrigation (a central, although not unique, element of SPIS), leads to substantial water savings compared to current practices, and improves crop quality thanks to a more stable supply, often improving real yields by over 300% . In addition, SPIS offer significant cost savings over time on labour, fuel and fertilizer, a total value to smallholder farmers estimated at around $14,000 per acre annually. Economically, the benefits of increased use of SPIS translate into local opportunities beyond the agricultural boundaries, as small businesses arise to meet demand in manufacture, assembly, repair and sales of SPIS.

The agricultural sector still plays a major role in Southern African economies, representing up to 27% of GDP and 13% of export earnings. Southern African countries face a considerable challenge in financing their climate change mitigation and adaptation plans. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) form the backbone of Southern African economies, in the renewable energy and agricultural sectors however SMEs are facing substantial challenges in accessing finance through financial institutions locally.

Local development and commercial banks are increasingly gaining access to climate/green funds but are lacking the capacity and tools to build an investment pipeline to finance SMEs in these fields.

The Beyond the Grid Fund for Zambia (BGFZ) reached its successful conclusion – one million lives lit up. Launched in 2016, the pilot programme was funded by Sweden and implemented by REEEP as an ambitious results-based financing multi-year programme aiming to increase energy access, accelerate private-sector growth in energy generation and distribution in the country, improve livelihoods and catalyse economic activity in rural and peri-urban areas.

BGFZ’s objective was to bring modern affordable energy services to at least 192,000 households – translating to one million Zambians – by 2021. This target was achieved in September 2021, and the results were acknowledged by public and private stakeholders at an acknowledgement event in Lusaka in March 2022.

Building on the success of this pilot, the programme was expanded into the Beyond the Grid Fund for Africa (BGFA) in 2019, which brings the concept to five additional countries along with more financing to further improve energy access in Zambia.

Over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without access to electricity. The Beyond the Grid Fund for Africa (BGFA) aims to reduce this gap by stimulating and accelerating new business models to incentivise the private sector to offer affordable and clean energy access at scale to people living in rural and peri-urban areas. BGFA was established in 2019 as an initiative of the Swedish Government – building on REEEP’s successful, award-winning pilot in Zambia, the Beyond the Grid Fund for Zambia (BGFZ) – and is facility managed by the Nordic Environmental Finance Corporation (Nefco).

Today, BGFA is a multi-year funding facility aimed at expanding BGFZ’s approach into new sub-Saharan African countries and kick-start markets for clean off-grid energy. By enabling the scale-up and greater deployment of energy access solutions in different markets, the programme aims to create long-lasting change. It works through a combination of an innovative results-based financing mechanism for energy companies, close cooperation with governments and real-time data collection and analysis. The BGFA programme aims to establish up to 1.44 million energy connections by 2028, benefiting more than 6.5 million people.