PFAN's global network of expert consultants provides free business coaching and investment facilitation to entrepreneurs developing climate adaptation and clean energy projects in low- and middle-income countries. It aims to build clean energy markets one business at a time, mitigate climate change and mobilise private investment in support of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals. PFAN is hosted by UNIDO and REEEP in Vienna, Austria.
Background
As technology prices continue to fall, clean energy projects become more profitable and the appetite of investors for such projects grows, now is a time of enormous potential for the development of clean energy capacity around the world. PFAN helps investors tap into this potential to expand energy access, reduce damage to the environment, combat climate change and grow local economies.
A rapid scale-up of investment in clean energy generation capacity is required to replace energy generation based on fossil fuels and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. At the same time, significant investment will have to flow towards increasing the resilience of vulnerable populations and helping them to adapt to the changes already here and those still to come.
Governments alone will not be able to provide enough investment to achieve the impact required. Unlocking private sector finance in support of climate action is one of the main challenges that governments, international organisations and development banks have been grappling with since the Paris Agreement entered into force. PFAN has been tackling this challenge since 2006, using small amounts of public funding to leverage large amounts of private sector investment for clean energy and climate adaptation projects in low- and middle-income countries.
While combating climate change is its ultimate goal, in its day-to-day work PFAN is driven by a desire to help entrepreneurs succeed. PFAN knows that getting a project off the ground is difficult; it is aware of the barriers to finding investment that project developers face. Helping entrepreneurs overcome those barriers to fulfil their potential and contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation is what drives the PFAn network.
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