COP24: UK Announces £100M Funding for Africa’s Clean Energy Projects

The UK government yesterday announced a significant increase in funding which supports the renewable energy projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. The announcement was made by the diplomats attending the Katowice COP24 Summit in Poland.

The UK’s Energy and Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry confirmed that an extra £100m is to be assigned to the Renewable Energy Performance Platform, providing support for up to 40 new renewable energy projects across Africa over the next five years.

“This £100m will help communities harness the power of their natural resources to provide hundreds of thousands of people with electricity for the first time. Building these clean, reliable sources of energy will also create thousands of quality jobs in these growing green economies,” says Perry.

The fund will support developers of small-scale solar, wind, hydro and geothermal projects and also provide new or improved access to clean power for up to 2.4 million people a year in the African continent.

The UK governments latest commitment is a part of the country’s pledge of £5.8 Billion in the International Climate Finance by 2020. The move triples the level of funding made available to an additional £156 Million of private finance, according to the official statement.

The power produced by the 40 new projects will save around 3 million tonnes of CO2 in its lifetime operations which is equal to 800,000 cars off the road each year or the equivalent to the emissions from burning 21,000 railway cars of coal.

Projects already receiving funding include a scheme to provide solar power to 70,000 people including 6,000 who will have access to energy for the first time in Kilosa, Tanzania and biomass plants in Ebolowa and Edea, Cameroon, providing enough energy for 520,000 rural people and 460 jobs.

At COP24 the UK also announced:

• £15.6 million to help countries vulnerable to climate change have a voice in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations.
• £771,000 to help developing countries take part in COP24.
• An additional £45 million to the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions’ (NAMA) Facility, co-founded by the UK, to help reduce emissions within an economic sector.
• An additional £1 million for the Global Innovation Lab, which helps innovative climate finance proposals move more quickly to implementation and attract funding.