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Dear Clean Energy Colleague,
Tomorrow is the last day of ACEF 2015, but there are still many more sessions and interesting topics to discuss. We will have the final two sessions of the Policy & Regulation, Finance, and Technology tracks. The Closing Plenary, from 2pm to 4pm, will include a number of interesting speakers: the Track Chairs will first present the key takeaways from all six tracks, followed by a keynote address by Ralph Sims, Professor of Sustainable Energy at Massey University, New Zealand, and Director of the Centre for Energy Research. ACEF will conclude with closing remarks from ADB VP Wencai Zhang.
Before the closing remarks, we will hold the ACEF Grand Raffle, to give away 9 iPad Minis and 1 iPad. To be eligible for the raffle, ACEF participants must turn in an evaluation form by 1:00PM; forms will be available Friday morning at the Secretariat desk in the hallway outside the auditorium.
ACEF 2015 Day 4 started off this morning with the final sessions for Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy and Energy Access Tracks, and the first sessions in the Policy, Technology and Finance Tracks. In the afternoon, we held our Knowledge Networking Session, with 26 speakers presenting innovative and cutting edge concepts, projects and initiatives for deploying clean energy across Asia. During the fast paced session, more than 200 participants had 8 rounds of 8 minutes each to sit with presenters on their main topics of interest. The event is the first of its kind at ACEF and was very well received. Here are some thoughts from presenters and participants at the event.
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Corinne Hart, Director, Gender and Humanitarian Programs, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
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“There were a lot of people at the event, and there were a lot of men talking and discussing gender issues with us. This morning, I talked about refugees and IDPs and how they desperately need clean energy solutions, and I was able to share my ideas. We ended up talking to people that we would not have ordinarily come across at ACEF. This event was much better than a poster session. In fact, I’m going to suggest to the organizing committee of the Clean Cooking Forum to be held in November in Ghana to follow this model of networking.â€
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Fred Chang, Managing Director, Unicorn Capital
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“One of the key benefits of the Knowledge Networking was that people were telling their colleagues to come over and meet me. That happened a couple of times, so the networking was happening instantaneously. This event is unique because it attracts such diverse people from policy, finance, and technology perspectives. In fact, you would not find this mix of people anywhere else, and there is great potential to connect with others. We have got the technologies and policies, we need to pioneer new financing mechanisms and find new areas for investment. There are a lot of project people here, and that reflects the market. In the future, ACEF will be seeing many more corporates getting involved as the clean energy market evolves.â€
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Clean Energy Finance Plenary
To end the day, the Clean Energy Finance Plenary featured speakers from finance organizations, governments, development partners, and practitioners. This panel discussion focused on bridging the gap between the finance sectors and project developers, at the macro and local level, accelerating the pace of clean energy finance growth in Asia.
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Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros, Director, Finance Center World Resources Institute
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I wanted to remind people about the three key messages to take away from ACEF on finance:
- Compared to a decade ago, investment is five times greater in clean energy.
- We need to do more if we want to bend the emissions curve. If we want to meet the huge energy access challenge, if we want to grow and meet development objectives, we need to do more to shift away from carbon intensive choices.
- We have heard a lot of messages about the sense of urgency. Yes, we are in an energy revolution…but we don’t have a lot of time and we need to accelerate the pace of the transition.
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Pankaj Sehgal, Managing Director, Sun Group, India
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"My example of a scaling up clean energy initiative is based on an Indian example: most of you probably are aware that the Indian gov’t is talking about deploying 100 GW of solar over the next 5 years. In context, India’s total energy deployment today is roughly 265 GW. India’s solar program only started 5 years ago, and we have roughly 6 GWs installed. So we have achieved 6% of the target so far, and we plan another 94% in five years…this requires substantial foreign investment in the sector and a scale up of domestic investment."
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Zhipeng Liang, Deputy Director General, New and Renewable Energy Department, National Energy Administration/National Development and Reform Commission, PRC
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"In China in the past few years renewable energy has developed very quickly; I think the most important support measure is the national policy framework. In 2005 there were only a few government-funded renewable energy projects. After this, China established several important policies, including a national target and planning…it also established a very important incentive policy, including feed-in tariffs to support wind and solar."
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Gil-Hong Kim, Senior Director, Sector Advisory Service, Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department, ADB
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"ADB’s clean energy policy is very clear: ADB will support clean energy for all to support a sustainable development agenda to remove extreme poverty. Our clean energy policy is very important to achieve ADB’s mandate as a development bank.
We are helping to scale up clean energy investment in a few ways…We help countries make the policy and regulatory framework right…We support project development and financing…we help increase the size of the market to make it attractive to investment…and we provide knowledge sharing and demonstration projects."
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Jamie Summons, Head of Weather Solutions, Asia Pacific, Swiss Re Corporate
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"Wind farm operators are constantly looking for ways to better protect themselves in low-wind weather cycles. By indexing the risk to actual energy production, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions has enabled an Australian wind power producer to directly transfer part of the risk of variable wind resource outcomes."
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Philip Graham, Managing Director, Head of Power Banking, Asia/Pacific Region, Citigroup Capital Markets, Inc.
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"YieldCos are about collecting different assets with different classes of risk…putting a collection of assets into a box and trying to get the lowest cost of capital from the market. All of the discussion has been about asset-level deals in Asia…eventually what you’ll find is that you’ll roll assets into portfolios, and then you’ll eventually end up at YieldCos, but it’s a journey. I think China will be first, and the scale will go there. If the other countries can get the policies in place to scale up, they’ll be able to access it as well."
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Aiming Zhou, ADB Peter du Pont, Nexant
Chair Co-Chair
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