Over the course of a year, the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) provided Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) with technical and financial support to carry out analysis examining the effective use of public finance to scale up concentrated solar power (CSP) deployment and reduce its costs.
The CIF and CPI hosted a webinar to share findings from this project on Thursday, September 4, 2014 at:
First Session: 13:00 Central European Time / 16:30 New Delhi / 07:00 Washington, DC / 14:00 Nairobi / 06:00 Mexico City )
Second Session: 17:30 Central European Time / 21:00 New Delhi / 11:30 Washington, DC / 18:30 Nairobi / 10:30 Mexico City)
Based on case studies of CSP projects in India and South Africa, market and policy analysis of the Spanish and international market, and after a series of dialogues in Asia, Europe and the US, CPI analysts will present the learnings for international financial institutions and national policymakers on how to improve policy design and lending practices to better achieve objectives. Representatives from the CPI and the CIF were on both webinars.
The analysis found that both national governments and international financial institutions can take actions to enhance the effectiveness of their support for CSP. All documents are available here with further blogs on CSP here.
National governments should:
Ensure that support can be sustained over time to avoid boom and bust
Design policy to ensure that the cost of support falls to reflect decreasing technology costs over time
Reduce the perception of policy risk and thereby the cost of renewable energy support by ensuring both public and private actors have a financial stake in projects
Make reliable on-site solar irradiation data available
Move away from flat power tariffs to remunerate the flexible power supply provided by CSP to more accurately reflect its benefit to the energy system
International financial institutions should:
Target support to countries that are committed to harnessing their solar resources but are unable to bear the full cost due to weak capital markets and little or no CSP experience
Target public funding to mitigate risks for early stage CSP technologies with high investment risks but great potential for cost reductions or energy system benefits
Provide knowledge on policy tools and technology to local policymakers
Consider adjusting loan requirements according to the technology maturity
Harmonize loan and regulatory requirements when groups of institutions lend to large CSP projects
Reduce foreign exchange hedging costs of IFI loans for developers, by either taking on the risks or convincing host countries to partially denominate tariffs in foreign currency
We encourage you to share these links with interested colleagues and we welcome your feedback on the value of this work. We do hope you are able to attend the webinar and look forward to your engagement.