ALER was present at the High Level Conference on Sustainable Energy and Development

ALER was invited to participate on October 3, in the High-level Conference on “Regional Cooperation to Accelerate Sustainable Energy Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries”, organized by the Austrian EU Presidency and the UNIDO Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

The conference has taken place in Vienna, Austria together with the Informal Meeting of the 28 EU Directors General for Development Cooperation in order to promote the activities of the Regional Sustainable Energy Centers among EU Member States.

The meeting discussed how regional approaches and tools could be used to accelerate the uptake of decentralized renewable technology markets in low-income countries.

In this meeting, ALER’s Vice-President, Mr. Guilherme Collares Pereira was invited to participate in the panel discussion on “Regional Sustainable Energy Entrepreneurship” where he presented ALER’s vision and experience on how regional cooperation, in this case in the Portuguese-Speaking countries, can become a vehicle to promote sustainable energy business, entrepreneurship and innovation and can help to mobilise financing.

As a result of the interactive panel discussions with 10 start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises from and active in Africa, the need for support to the private sector to deliver clean energy access solutions in a timely and efficient way was highlighted. The following key recommendations were made:

Large, donor supported patient debt, equity and results-based financing tools are needed to bring in other financiers and to allow proven models to scale;
Donor support is needed to de-risk tools such as off-taker risk guarantees, and political and forex risk mitigation, to allow companies to truly deliver last mile / universal energy; and
Strong focus on the supply(ier) side complementary to the demand-side is needed. Donor support for economically productive local activity is urgently needed in the form of microfinance and entrepreneurship support.

The Business Forum and the High-Level Conference was an important preparatory meeting for the EU-Africa Summit to be organized in December in Vienna.