Climate Finance Accelerator South Africa Launch

The year 2021 is pivotal in the race to tackle climate change, and countries have a limited amount of time for action. Responding effectively to this global challenge involves a massive transformation in financial markets. The scale of financial and other resources needed to achieve this transformation is in the order of hundreds of billions of US dollars. 

This transformation must involve a country-driven shift toward policies and technologies that catalyse new investments and mainstream climate change into existing systems, as articulated in countries’ climate commitments. South Africa requires a clear pathway to financing and implementing its climate targets as part of achieving a just transition for the country.

A key barrier to climate action is the shortage of projects able to attract the finance and investment necessary for large-scale implementation. The financing available and the capacities to absorb such resources vary across different countries, something which the National Business Initiative (NBI) and GreenCape have worked to address in South Africa over the past few years.

NBI in partnership with GreenCape have recently been appointed as the delivery partners for the Climate Finance Accelerator (CFA) in South Africa. The CFA is a technical assistance programme funded by UK International Climate Finance, globally led by PwC, in collaboration with Ricardo.

The main objective of the CFA programme is to improve the flow of climate finance in South Africa which will support the implementation of South Africa’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), thereby delivering emissions reductions and raising overall climate ambition.

The CFA:

• Offers opportunities for project developers, financiers and policy makers to work together to identify funding options to get capital flowing to low carbon projects, with the aim of enabling the development of a pipeline of low carbon projects.
• Will help to turn potential investment opportunities into fully funded projects. It aims to unlock great ideas and transformative technologies by enabling projects that would otherwise remain on the drawing board to be financed.
• Will also contribute to embedding a permanent CFA process in South Africa which will create a sustainable model for leveraging private capital to help fund the NDC and reduce emissions.

The NBI, GreenCape, the British High Commission Pretoria, the Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the CFA team are pleased to invite you to attend the launch of CFA South Africa to provide targeted support for expanding South Africa’s pipeline of climate projects able to attract finance. 

The objectives of the launch event are threefold:

1. Detail the scope of the CFA in South Africa, the expected benefits, and the opportunities for stakeholder engagement and involvement;
2. Provide a high-level overview of the key findings from the climate finance landscape mapping, including gaps in the climate finance supply chain; and
3. Discuss investment barriers and opportunities in relevant low carbon sectors in South Africa.

Please click here to register for this Zoom event.