Energizing Finance: Understanding the Landscape

The report finds that energy finance in high-impact countries (HICs) is critically insufficient to meet SDG7 targets. In 2019, tracked electricity finance in HICs fell to USD 32 billion, with residential access funding at only one-third of the required annual investment. Clean cooking investment has stagnated around USD 130 million annually, far below the USD 4.5 billion needed. While there is a positive shift away from fossil fuel electricity generation and an increase in private finance for clean cooking, significant gaps remain, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report advocates for increased climate resilience in infrastructure, the scaling of decentralized energy solutions, and the integration of clean cooking into national climate policies and NDCs.

• Tracked finance for electricity in high-impact countries (HICs) declined by 27 percent in 2019, falling to USD 32 billion from USD 43.6 billion in 2018. Of this, residential electricity access received USD 12.9 billion, which is less than one-third of the estimated USD 41 billion annual investment required globally to reach universal access by 2030.
• Electricity finance in HICs shifted toward Paris Agreement-aligned solutions in 2019, with grid-connected fossil fuel commitments dropping from 50 percent of total electricity finance in 2018 to 25 percent in 2019. Additionally, finance for transmission and distribution infrastructure reached its highest level since 2013.
• Finance for decentralized electricity solutions, including off-grid and mini-grids, remains critically low, representing only 0.9 percent of tracked electricity finance. Bilateral and multilateral development finance institution (DFI) commitments to this sector plummeted from USD 260 million in 2018 to USD 34 million in 2019.
• Clean cooking investment is chronically underfunded, with annual tracked commitments in HICs stagnating around USD 130 million between 2015 and 2019, far below the USD 4.5 billion annual requirement for universal access. This investment is heavily concentrated in a few countries and projects, with 70 percent of finance for Bangladesh and Kenya coming from just seven projects.
• Private sector investment in clean cooking reached a peak of USD 56 million in 2019, increasing from USD 32 million in 2018. However, improved cookstoves (ICS) attracted no tracked private investment in 2019, despite attracting 58 percent of public finance.
• Clean cooking is largely absent from national climate strategies; only 43 of 165 countries mention cooking and cookstoves in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC, and only 12 of the high-impact countries include them.
• A case study of Mozambique highlights the vulnerability of centralized electricity systems to climate change, noting that the Cahora Bassa dam provides over 50 percent of the country's supply via a single transmission line. The study suggests diversifying into renewables and decentralized solutions to increase resilience.

APA

Richmond, M., Meattle, C., Pinko, N., Stout, S., Azhar, H., Mazza, F., & Dickson, M. (2021). Energizing Finance: Understanding the Landscape. Sustainable Energy for All. https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2021-10/EF-2021-UL-ES-SEforALL.pdf

Chicago

Richmond, Morgan, Chavi Meattle, Nicole Pinko, Sean Stout, Haysam Azhar, Federico Mazza, and Melina Dickson. Energizing Finance: Understanding the Landscape. Sustainable Energy for All, 2021. https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2021-10/EF-2021-UL-ES-SEforALL.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{richmond2021energizing, author = {Richmond, Morgan and Meattle, Chavi and Pinko, Nicole and Stout, Sean and Azhar, Haysam and Mazza, Federico and Dickson, Melina}, title = {{Energizing Finance: Understanding the Landscape}}, institution = {Sustainable Energy for All}, year = {2021}, url = {https://www.seforall.org/system/files/2021-10/EF-2021-UL-ES-SEforALL.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }