As Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon. Let me start by acknowledging my colleague, Director-General Dr. Alkhalifa, who has been a true friend and partner to UNCDF. We look forward to many avenues of collaboration in the future.

Let me also acknowledge the CEO of SEforALL, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, and the Co-Chair of UN Energy, Ms. Damilola Ogunbiyi.

Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge two essential partners who are represented here today: the European Union and the Government of Tanzania. Development impact requires committed impactful partners, and both the EU and the Government of Tanzania have been irreplaceable partners in this regard.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am privileged to be here today with all of you, representing the UN Capital Development Fund, the UN’s flagship catalytic financing entity for the world’s 46 least developed countries, countries that we see as the frontier markets of today and the growth markets of tomorrow.

Our meeting comes just a few weeks after we shared our Strategic Framework to our executive board. If you read the Framework, and in particular the graphic involving our corporate offer, you will notice that the ring signifying Climate and Clean Energy finance as a thematic priority is interlinked with every other ring representing our priority areas—women’s economic empowerment, sustainable food systems finance, inclusive digital economies and local transformative finance.

This was not an accident. UNCDF’s work has proven that we can spur real impact in these development areas through our climate and clean energy solutions—including inclusive digital economies by leveraging Pay-go solutions, and women’s economic empowerment through our support of energy entrepreneurs. Simply said, the multiplier effect that our climate and clean energy finance work can provide is considerable, impactful, and potentially game-changing.

One critical priority for UNCDF is finance for clean and modern cooking, particularly when you consider that as many as 2.6 billion people lack access to clean cooking solutions. The negative impacts are, of course, disproportionately experienced by the most vulnerable; notably women as their economic agency is undermined due to time lost to cooking, and children who are denied the benefits of education because of time lost to fuel collection. This is, of course, separate from the harsh impacts of deforestation and disease from air pollution.

UNCDF has acquired valuable experience in building up viable markets for improved cooking solutions, notably in such markets as Nepal, Uganda, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burkina Faso. Within these markets, UNCDF has provided financing and advisory services to innovative enterprises, supporting the delivery of 1.3 million improved cooking solutions. In Uganda alone, UNCDF was involved in financing 11 enterprises that sold roughly 730,000 improved cooking solutions. And over the lifetime of these products, we project the volume of CO2 offset in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes.

Additionally, we have expanded access to financing for our clean energy SME partners. Because our unique capital mandate gives the ability to deploy financing tools, we can provide loans directly to energy companies; like we did for the DRC-based company, BBOXX, which is promoting state of the art LPG-based solutions. We are also supporting companies in directly accessing carbon financing schemes, including companies in Uganda like UPENERGY and Shimoshi, which are now utilizing these lifelines to capital.

UNCDF is also expanding this work in markets like Tanzania where a major clean cooking initiative has just been launched in close collaboration with local governments; as well as in Madagascar in line with the piloting of a UN sustainable energy partnership with the UN Development Programme or UNDO and UN Industrial Development Organization or UNIDO. Regarding Madagascar, we are proud to note that we will be collaborating strategically with the OPEC Fund’s Energy Transition Programme to ensure both maximum coordination and impact. The OPEC Fund’s Energy Transition Programme is truly ambitious, leveraging a long-view approach while focusing on financing to build a viable energy market for clean cooking solutions. So, we welcome this collaboration.

All of this said, we are still far from where we want to be when it comes to achieving universal access to clean fuels and technologies. This is due to a variety of factors: the complex and interconnected nature of the sector; the lack of policies, strategies and road maps at national and regional levels; weak institutional capacity of standards bodies; unscalable business models; and limited behavioral change. These factors, alongside the challenges around access to finance, continue to prevent the clean cooking sector from achieving scale.

Clearly, a lot more work remains to be done. The promising news is that we are already exploring an array of innovative solutions to take the next step in achieving universal access to clean fuels and technologies. We are continuing to assess climate finance opportunities, particularly opportunities around monetizing CO2 offsets and sequestration, resulting in new value streams for businesses.

We are also exploring digital finance solutions relating to asset-based financing, and the use of big data to better understand demand in the market. Blockchain is another pathway we are exploring with promising developments in the carbon credit trading and micro-leasing sectors. Additionally, globally recognized standards as well as implementation of Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV), both of which can be significantly enabled through digital technology, will be key to unlocking clean energy access.

Between these solutions and the aggregation of deals in our pipeline, we are aiming to attract the significant capital flows that will close the clean cooking solutions gap. Closing this gap gives us an opportunity to prove that capital can and should serve humanity, and not the other way around.

Thank you.