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FEATURE STORY September 16, 2021

What You Need to Know About Concessional Finance for Climate Action

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#ShowYourStripes graphic by Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) https://showyourstripes.info/


By channelling, blending, and aggregating public and private sources of capital, the World Bank Group and key partners like the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) have helped accelerate climate action in developing countries. In this Climate Explainer, Mafalda Duarte, Head of the Climate Investment Funds, describes the important role of concessional finance in CIF¡¯s pioneering renewable energy projects over the last 11 years.

What is concessional finance?

Put simply, concessional finance is below market rate finance provided by major financial institutions, such as development banks and multilateral funds, to developing countries to accelerate development objectives.

 

Why is concessional finance important?

Concessional finance targets high-impact projects responding to globally significant development challenges ¨C from climate change mitigation and resilience to vaccine deployment, water sanitation and education - that otherwise could not go ahead without specialised financial support.

As an example, a developing country may want to move away from fossil fuels and develop a series of renewable energy projects but does not have enough of its own capital to get started, nor access to reasonably priced loans and risk-friendly investors. Concessional finance support can help such projects get off the ground and contribute to global efforts to achieve net zero goals.

 

How is concessional finance used?

How these products are delivered must remain flexible to the unique needs of each development challenge. For example, concessional finance can be applied as grants, funding technical assistance to prepare a region¡¯s policies for industry decarbonisation. Concessional finance can also come in the form of a first loss guarantee whereby a third party compensates lenders if the borrower defaults; having such a guarantee in place can help a renewable power plant, for example, crowd in private sector investors. Concessional finance could be a low interest loan financing a health system improvement that needs to be paid back in 15 years instead of 5, or an equity investment into vaccine development asking for less value in shares than the investment is actually worth.  

The focus of concessional finance is not on a specific method or solution ¨C It is about becoming a flexible and accessible tool to bridge the gap from the limited pools of philanthropic and public sector funding, to the much larger private sector funding opportunities that enable such projects to scale.


"Concessional finance targets high-impact projects responding to globally significant development challenges ¨C from climate change mitigation and resilience to vaccine deployment, water sanitation and education - that otherwise could not go ahead without specialised financial support."
Mafalda Duarte headshot
Mafalda Duarte
Head of the Climate Investment Funds

What does concessional finance look like in practice?

Let¡¯s make this tangible with an example from the .

At a conference in 2021, the Kazakhstan Energy Minister said that in the last 5 years, the installed capacity of renewable energy in the country increased six times, from 240 MW in 2015 to 1634.7 MW in 2020. As of March 2021,  had 115 renewable energy projects, and had created 1,310 fixed jobs and 3,000 temporary jobs every year. Importantly, the conference marked the  in what was a historically staunch fossil-fuel-supporting and renewables-sceptic region.

In a few short years, an entire country had made a quantum leap in their renewable energy capacity, their private sector developer interest, and most importantly their national contribution to a low carbon transition.

So, what happened?

Notably, the shift didn¡¯t start with private capital. The $8 billion , supported by development funds from the UK, US, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Spain, Sweden and Australia, makes it one of the largest climate investment funds in the world. However, CIF knew that deploying concessional finance alone would not fix the problem. Targeted and collaborative technical support and preparation, with sector-wide transformation in mind, could.

As early as 2009, the CIF had already engaged with the Kazakhstan government, alongside the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, to raise awareness of and subsequently develop the region¡¯s clean energy policies.  This preparatory technical assistance started in 2009 and continued through to 2016, resulting in a renewable energy law, feed-in tariffs for renewable energy projects, and purchase obligations for renewable energy projects for the next 15 years.

During these 7 years,  was not deployed as loans to specific projects at all, but as grants to fund vital capacity building and policy work. These activities are what could be called the development of the right enabling conditions in order to kick-start a renewable energy market in the region and enhance the chances of success for any forthcoming commercial renewable energy projects. However, while these actions provided more solid foundations, several economic factors continued to hold back progress. These factors were related to the health of the economy and maturity of the financial system itself. They showed up as financial barriers for potential investors and developers in the region in the form of low liquidity, a chronic lack of access to infrastructure-scale capital, limited loan tenures of 4-5 years not conducive with market-making renewables projects, inflation and currency fluctuation, and rocketing interest rates.

This is where the role of  could really make a difference. Via CIF¡¯s Clean Technology Fund (CTF), flexible, below market-rate capital was provided to support each of these challenges as they happened on the ground. To support liquidity, CTF provided concessional finance to developers and blended it with development bank capital from MDBs. To tackle the longer payback periods associated with new renewable energy projects, CTF offered 15- to 20-year loan tenures which helped inform other local players that renewables weren¡¯t necessarily higher risk, just longer-term return prospects. To tackle domestic interest rates, CTF provided cornerstone capital at low interest rates of between 1-2%, knowing that this could later be crowded in by private sector rates of 10-12% in order to generate an overall commercially viable blended interest rate. Finally, by providing funds in multiple currencies ¨C USD and EUR ¨C the  manage some of the currency risks.

On top of the specific concessions that enabled the market, CTF also selected projects that would have a transformative effect on the region. Since then, these projects have come to symbolize the first projects that demonstrated the viability of the renewables sector in the region. Specifically, the CTF supported the financing of the first utility-scale solar photovoltaic project (Burnoye-1) and the country¡¯s first wind project (Ereymentau-1).

In total, CTF invested approximately $55.5 million of concessional finance into . As a , approximately $200 million of further MDB funding was secured, together with another $412 million in follow up financing ¨C making an attractive leverage ratio of approximately 11:1. As a result, total installed renewables capacity across the country  for onshore wind by the end of 2019.

Elsewhere, the policies put in place to kickstart the sector, like the feed-In tariff brought into action in 2013, attracted $1 billion of  into the region alone. And further technical support provided through funds from the CTF enabled the country to develop capacities in clean energy tendering to improve competitiveness and drive more developer and investment interest to the region.

Targeted support like this has enabled Kazakhstan to deliver on its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in support of the Paris Agreement. By 2020, the country pledged to derive 3% of its energy capacity from renewables. By the end of 2019,  was producing around 2.3% of the country¡¯s electricity from Solar PV, onshore and small hydropower, while large hydropower, was generating a further 9%.

However, to achieve Kazakhstan¡¯s NDC, the energy intensity of the economy must also be reduced by 30% by 2030 and 50% by 2050; with almost 70% of electricity currently coming from coal power plants, renewables can help .

Achieving these targets and attracting further investment into renewables in Kazakhstan will require addressing another major barrier: the efficacy of the power grid. , which contributes to about 13% of the annual power generated being lost[11]. Grid infrastructure and capacity must be a major focus in coming years because so much investment in renewables and green end-user technologies such as electric vehicles are dependent upon it. CIF and EBRD are already stepping up ¨C EBRD and partners are investing $30 million to support a major power utility and grid operator in Western Kazakhstan to modernise existing substations and distribution, and install new power lines, as well as data and automatic control systems. Elsewhere, CIFs Technical Assistance Facility is helping the Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC) to integrate renewables through enhanced tools, procedures and modernization of grid infrastructure.

As Kazakhstan strives to reach its Nationally Determined Contributions over the coming years, organisations such as CIF, EBRD and IFC will continue to play an important role in enabling and empowering the country to bridge the gap to investment-ready projects and transform their energy mix entirely.

 

What does Kazakhstan¡¯s experience say about the role of concessional finance?

; it can scale high-priority projects that impact the world¡¯s collective climate and development objectives. Concessional finance works best when it is used alongside long-term strategic engagement and technical assistance with a country; and, when done well, it can create game changing, sector transforming results.

 

What is the potential for concessional finance to accelerate the energy transition?

In order to reach net zero goals, it is estimated that the . By 2030, a further $300 billion per year will be required to continue to .

 In the latest , Climate finance was estimated to reach between $608-622 billion in 2019. In the same time period, .

Public funding will not be able to plug this gap on its own. The world urgently needs more innovative programmes and financial mechanisms like the ones used by, and in conjunction with, concessional finance mechanisms that can bridge the gap between public funds to larger scale private sector capital.

However, in order to get there, the role of concessional finance itself will need to evolve, too. To date concessional finance in climate finance has rarely been considered a source of returning income for a distributing fund. However, as long-term projects begin to move into maturity, there is now demonstrable evidence for how funds may consider structuring and valuing their in-flows to fund more strategic programmes and priorities.

Finally, after over a decade of practice at a project and programme level, the role of concessional finance is now being explored at fund level. This has particular growth potential for climate finance, in that a fund that is distributing several billion USD at a time, can more effectively and efficiently leverage private sector capital than the several million USD projects and programmes on the ground.



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