Background
India aims to transform its energy sector with an ambitious target of 500 GW of renewable energy (RE) by 2030. This requires supporting inter alia diverse applications of distributed renewable energy (DRE) such as rooftop solar, energy storage, EV charging infrastructure, e-mobility, DRE aggregation platforms and cooling solutions.
Falling technology costs and Government initiatives in India have created remarkable opportunities for rapid expansion in DRE markets. However, companies in the sector are largely unevolved and need significant project preparation support to catalyse private capital that could help scale up their businesses.
India Clean Energy Finance (ICEF) aims to unlock much-needed financing for the DRE sector from banks, NBFCs, impact investors and international financial institutions for the DRE sector.
The program is funded by international philanthropies – MacArthur Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
ICEF is derived from the learnings of the widely appreciated and successful US-India Clean Energy Finance (USICEF) initiative, a bilateral partnership with the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (erstwhile OPIC, now USDFC – US Government’s Development Finance Institution). USICEF was India’s first project preparation facility to help promising distributed solar projects develop into viable investment opportunities, via essential project preparation support.
Climate Policy Initiative serves as the Program Manager for ICEF.