Friday, 21 August

Dear <<First Name>>

It’s not very often that I get the chance to pat the backs of governments for their positive stance on climate change - and the lack of political leadership being shown around the world continues to dismay me. But I must give credit where credit is due. 

This week, the UK Government published a progress report on the UK’s International Climate Finance (ICF) scheme, set up to support developing countries respond to the challenges and opportunities of climate change. And it makes for impressive reading.

Since 2011, the ICF has mobilised more than £6 billion in public and private finance to international programmes addressing climate change, including REPP. This has led to a reduction of an estimated 31 million tonnes of GHG emissions and 2GW of installed clean energy capacity. Clean energy access has been improved for 33 million people, and a further 66 million have been supported to cope with the effects of climate change.

With the Government last year announcing it was doubling its commitment to ICF to at least £11.6 billion over the period 2021-2025, we can expect a significant increase on these already substantial achievements.

Cheers

Geoff

Managing Director - Camco Clean Energy

West Africa

Nigeria: Declining collections from distribution companies may worsen liquidity challenge (This Day)
- Discos seeing fall in collections as COVID-19 hits and measures introduced to stop disconnections.

Nigeria: African entrepreneur using solar-powered cold stores to reduce food waste (Global Citizen)
- The refrigerated “ColdHubs” are being used to strengthen Nigeria's agricultural sector by limiting food spoilage.

East Africa

Kenya: GivePower installs solar-powered desalination system (Afrik21)
- The new system located in Likoni will be capable of providing 70m³ of drinking water per day to the local community.

Ethiopia: Talks resume with Egypt and Sudan over Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (ENA)
- Virtual meeting between government ministers commenced on Sunday after earlier discussions ended in deadlock.

East Africa: AFD partners with TDB to open a US$150 million line of credit for green infrastructure (Afrik21)
- Facility will help clean energy projects with 80% of funding to be dedicated to financing those that reduce or limit GHG emissions.

Southern Africa

Madagascar: Groupe Filatex and Dera Energy to install 170MW of solar PV capacity (Engineering News)
- Roll-out of generation facilities will help alleviate the country's electricity shortage.

South Africa: Agreement finally reached on long-awaited Infrastructure Fund (ESI)
- The Fund will receive R100 billion over the next 10 years with support taking many different forms to assist large-scale projects.

South Africa: IPPs support easing regulations to allow municipalities to buy power (ESI)
- Publication of draft amendments to the Electricity Regulations Act leads to IPPs calling for a more conducive regulatory framework.

Africa - other

General: Ignite Power to acquire 300,000 solar home systems (Afrik21)
- The solar kit supplier is tendering for the procurement of the systems to support its expansion plans.

General: COVID-19 accelerating energy transition in Africa (Biz Community)
- Expected drop in energy consumption and demand has opened the door for increased renewables adoption.

Rest of World

Energy storage: Investment into energy storage will approach US$10 billion by 2025 (PV-Magazine)
- Analysts also predict that storage deployment will hit 15.1GW/47.8GWh in five years’ time.

Currencies