The Clean Energy Investment Framework

In Africa, access to energy is critical for reducing poverty, improving people’s standards of living, and for making the continent more competitive globally. Climate change and energy security especially in sub-Saharan Africa are major concerns at the African Development Bank. The Bank’s Clean Energy for Development Investment Framework is a first step in addressing the need for greater energy access while considering the opportunities of shifting energy investments to favor low-carbon development paths. Several activities can be pursued to increase access to sustainable and secure clean energy.

• Harnessing local, available renewable energy resources for rural electrification.
• Reversing deforestation and using smokeless stoves.
• Growing and processing new-generation bio-fuels.
• Using renewable low-carbon energy sources.
• Upgrading to clean technologies.
• Increasing energy and transport efficiency.
• Creating sewage and waste-removal systems to extract biogases.

To promote these efforts, the African Development Bank supports its member countries in three specific ways. First, by encouraging them to mainstream clean energy options into national development plans and energy planning. This involves promoting the use of efficient vehicles and reduced emissions, producing and using new-generation biofuels, and designing rational urban planning that includes mass transit. Second, the Bank is promoting investment in clean energy, including wind-power, hydropower and thermal power, smoke-free stoves, low-light technologies, and extending, improving and subsidizing and connecting national power grids. The Bank is a catalyst for mobilizing the capital for a Clean Technology Fund, as well as the technology and human resources from Africa and beyond required to meet these serious challenges. Third, the Bank is working to boost energy access in Africa by using the huge energy potential of the continent and by addressing the need for a low-carbon economy.