The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the US government’s development finance institution, and the Renewable Energy Performance Platform (REPP) have announced an agreement to facilitate cooperation on renewable energy projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

“This cooperation is intended to provide REPP participants with additional options for financing and insurance and to help identify new clean energy projects in Sub-Saharan that advance OPIC’s Power Africa goals and commitment to supporting clean and renewable energy projects,” said Lynn Tabernacki, Managing Director of OPIC’s Renewable and Clean Energy Programs.

Through this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), OPIC will partner with REPP to identify projects that could benefit from their mutual support and assistance, beginning from early stage development.

The intention is to identify strong projects that would be eligible for OPIC financing at an early stage so that with REPP assistance, the projects have a higher likelihood of being financed and achieving their intended development impact.

REPP, developed by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), was designed to address gaps in climate investment in developing countries including the shortage of support for early stage investment opportunities and shortage of small and medium sized projects (up to 25MW).

It aims to help overcome investment hurdles for first mover projects operating within newly supportive policy environments.

REPP’s support includes: technical assistance during the development phase, access to risk mitigation tools, access to long-term lending from REPP partners, assistance with financial structuring, and results-based financial support.

REPP is managed by a consortium, comprised of Camco Clean Energy and Greenstream, to install over 150 MW of clean energy to the Sub-Saharan region of Africa within a five year period.

“Our team is pleased to be working with OPIC to realize the enormous potential for small-scale and distributed clean energy in Africa,” said Geoff Sinclair, Managing Director of Camco’s African business.