By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The Climate Finance Accelerator (CFA), a technical assistance programme funded by the UK government, will support promising low-carbon projects in Egypt and connect them with investors.
Applications for the four-year programme will open next month, with each accelerator cycle for the selected project developers lasting six to nine months.
It comes at a time when Egypt is working to encourage investment in green energy projects, as it prepares to host the Cop27 UN climate change conference in Sharm El Sheikh in November.
“We’re really excited to see the kind of projects that are out there in Egypt,” Alex Clarke, technical lead for the CFA, said at the launch of the programme on Monday.
Founded in 2017, the CFA has supported more than 50 projects across a variety of sectors in Colombia, Nigeria, Mexico, Turkey, South Africa, Peru and Pakistan.
While the CFA does not itself provide grants, the £10 million ($11.8m) programme is funded by International Climate Finance (ICF) through the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The CFA “is part of the UK’s efforts to support climate action by providing practical ways to help governments in middle-income countries finance and deliver their commitments under the Paris Agreement”, the British government said.
The pact, adopted by 196 countries at Cop21 in 2015, set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
At the time, developed countries committed to providing $100 billion per year in climate finance from public and private sources to support developing countries. As part of this commitment, the UK pledged to provide at least £5.8bn between 2016 and 2020.
However, climate finance has been a point of contention and is expected to be one of the main topics of discussion at Cop27.
