PFAN Report Highlights Progress on Climate and Clean Energy Investment

By Nancy Nguyen

The Private Financing Advisory Network (PFAN), one of our strategic partners, has recently released its Progress Report, which features its 2019 activities and impacts related to matchmaking for climate and clean energy projects in middle and low-income countries. 

Since its inception in 2006, as a joint effort by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Climate Technology Initiative (CTI), PFAN has helped 127 projects in 27 countries to mobilize $1.7 billion in investment for clean energy investment. PFAN works across multiple sectors and locations: from helping a tech startup raise funding for simple internet-of-things (IoT) enabled products and services to farmers in India, to assisting an entrepreneur in implementing a fully integrated pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) service that provides clean electricity to rural households in Zambia. These projects are expected to generate more than 1,000MW of electricity, which are enough to meet the power demand of 2.4 million households in India. These new clean energy sources will also help reduce 4 million tons of CO2, equivalent to taking approximately 850,000 cars off the road. By the end of 2019, PFAN had created an active pipeline of more than 750 projects across Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific. 

PFAN’s recent success lays on its unique methods of working with both project developers and investors. PFAN’s global network of expert consultants work directly with potential projects, provide strategic advisory and mentoring services on the preparation and refinement of the business plans, improvement of financial models, and other related documentation necessary for investor outreach. Once investment proposals are ready, PFAN promotes and matches them with suitable investors.

In 2019, PFAN initiated support for projects that implement energy-efficient cooling, and this opened PFAN up to a whole range of new sectors and technologies. Moving forward, PFAN will expand its focus to support projects that provide benefits in the area of climate change adaptation and resilience. In addition, PFAN pays specific attention to gender mainstreaming, making it an essential element within both our internal operations and market-facing activities.

PFAN's activities in Asia are currently executed with the support from 11 Country Coordinators and 32 advisors, who have extensive knowledge and experience in project coaching and investment facilitation for clean energy and climate resilience projects in Asia. During 2019, PFAN coaches and investment facilitators in Asia helped 18 projects raise USD 229 million of investment. The projects focus on technologies and innovations in the area of climate resilience and clean energy—including biomass, bio-fuels, clean transport, hydro, solar, and solutions for heating and cooling—and span countries including Cambodia, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

At the time of writing, PFAN is offering its expertise to help climate entrepreneurs ensure business continuity in these turbulent times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning in June 2020, PFAN will begin a COVID-19 response initiative to mentor businesses on continuity planning; enabling access to special Covid-19 Relief Funds and financing facilities from investors and donors; and also supporting rescheduling and renegotiation of existing facilities.

For more details on PFAN’s Progress Report for 2019, please download it here.