Publication:
Seven Sisters: Accelerating Solar Power Investments

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (972.87 KB)
454 downloads
English Text (14.04 KB)
11 downloads
Published
2016-09
ISSN
Date
2018-09-05
Editor(s)
Abstract
In the face of high and volatile fossil fuel prices the government of Jordan launched an aggressive national strategy to increase production of privately financed, commercial scale renewable energy. This pivot was initially met with skepticism from developers and financiers. Yet by aggregating seven small, individual solar power projects into a single, standardized financing structure, the Seven Sisters, the country was able spread costs, shorten timelines, and ultimately attract the necessary financing and developers to make the effort a reality.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Pace, Jordan. 2016. Seven Sisters: Accelerating Solar Power Investments. EMCompass,no. 18;. © International Finance Corporation. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30344 License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO.
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
  • Publication
    Financing Deep Tech
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Nedayvoda, Anastasia; Delavelle, Fannie; So, Hoi Ying; Graf, Lana; Taupin, Louise
    Deep tech companies - those built on advances in biotechnology, robotics, electronics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies—aim to solve complex social and environmental challenges. Today the majority of deep tech companies are being launched in developed countries, yet the solutions they can provide are applicable globally. Many of these solutions are especially critical to emerging markets, as the intractable challenges of climate, health, and connectivity, among other issues, disproportionately affect these nations. Addressing these challenges is a strategic priority for development finance institutions and governments worldwide, so financing deep tech companies and boosting deep tech ecosystems in order to deliver new solutions globally is a pressing matter. Doing so, however, requires substantial capital and carries a higher degree of risk than ordinary venture investments. This note examines the process of financing a deep tech company, including the benefits and drawbacks of currently available types of financing, and suggests examples of promising but not yet widespread alternatives.
  • Publication
    Banking on FinTech in Emerging Markets
    (International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2022-01) Rose Innes, Cleo; Andrieu, Jacqueline
    Despite near-universal access to financial services in advanced economies, financial exclusion is stubbornly persistent in many emerging markets, leaving huge swaths of low-income populations unbanked or underbanked. FinTech companies, which apply innovative technologies to deliver such services in new ways, have begun to tap into the enormous unmet demand that this represents. These companies are starting to thrive in emerging markets, though regulatory issues, particularly weak consumer protection measures, remain to be resolved in many countries. If these can be overcome, and more progress toward universal access to digital infrastructure can be made, FinTechs will continue to scale and spread.
  • Publication
    Sustainability-Linked Finance
    (International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2022-01) de la Orden, Raquel; de Calonje, Ignacio
    Sustainability-linked finance is designed to incentivize the borrower’s achievement of environmental, social, or governance targets through pricing incentives. Launched in 2017, it has now become the fastest-growing sustainable finance instrument, with over $809 billion issued to date in sustainability-linked loans and bonds. Yet these instruments are still nascent in emerging markets, which represent only 5 percent of total issuance to date. This note shares examples of recent sustainability-linked financing, including several involving IFC in various roles, to highlight how investors can utilize these new instruments in emerging markets and mitigate greenwashing risks
  • Publication
    Enabling Private Investment in 5G Connectivity in Emerging Markets
    (International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2021-04) Houngbonon, Georges V.; Rossotto, Carlo Maria; Strusani, Davide
    This note proposes a high-level framework to assess challenges and policy options to enabling private sector-led investment in 5G connectivity in emerging markets. 5G is the latest mobile network technology and it has the potential to provide high-speed Internet connectivity and enable digital transformation across multiple sectors of an economy. The proposed framework leverages industry data to articulate the digital divide and benchmark the enabling environment for 5G connectivity in emerging markets. The note concludes with recommendations on policy options and business strategies, drawing from early experiences in advanced markets and major opportunities and challenges in emerging markets.
  • Publication
    Artificial Intelligence
    (International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2019-09) Mou, Xiaomin
    The global race to fund, develop, and acquire artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and start-ups is intensifying, with commercial uses for AI proliferating in advanced and emerging economies alike. AI can increase gross domestic product (GDP) growth in both advanced countries and emerging markets. In energy, AI can optimize power transmission. In healthcare, diagnosis and drug discovery will benefit enormously from AI. In education it can improve learning environments and learning outcomes and can better prepare youth for transition to the workplace. In manufacturing, AI can help design better products in terms of functionality, quality, and cost, and improve predictive maintenance. AI can help extend credit and financial services to those who lack them. The potential impact of AI on transportation and logistics goes far beyond automation and road safety to span the entire logistics chain. Yet with the exceptions of China and India, emerging markets have received only a modest share of global investment in this advanced technology, despite the fact that they may benefit more from AI implementation than advanced economies.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    How to Scale Solar Power Generation in Emerging Markets
    (International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2016-09) Pace, Jordan
    Solar power is an increasingly affordable, quick-to-build solution for countries in need of additional electricity generation. Yet many emerging markets face challenges to developing photovoltaic projects, as small project sizes and lengthy negotiations increase costs and timelines. Scaling Solar, launched by the World Bank Group in 2015, addresses these issues by providing an easy-to-follow process to plan, procure, and launch grid-connected solar projects using private sector financing within two years of engagement. It offers governments the tools to quickly increase energy generation at stable low tariffs and allows developers to bid on well-structured, standardized projects through a competitive, transparent process that reduces risk and costs, making new markets easier to navigate.
  • Publication
    Rooftop Solar in Maldives
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-03) Kohli, Sandeep; Braud, Arnaud
    This guidance note talks about Rooftop solar in Maldives. The Maldives Ministry of Environment and Energy, with support from the World Bank and from the Scaling Up Renewable Energy Program (SREP), a funding window of the Climate Investment Fund,has designed a program centered on solar photovoltaic (PV) rooftop installations to take advantage of the Maldive's high insolation while also coping with the scarcity of land. Expensive diesel-fired generators operated by two state-owned utilities keep the lights on in Maldives, an archipelago of 200 inhabited islands spread over 900 kilometers of the Indian Ocean. But with the advent of affordable solar technology, the islands’ abundant sunshine can be harnessed for clean generation through private rooftop solar systems. With World Bank support, an innovative guarantee structure has been designed to attract private developers. The Asia Sustainable and Alternative Energy Program at the World Bank supported the development of the ASPIRE concept. ASPIRE’s goal is to scale up solar PV generation from the present level of 1.5 megawatts (MW) to between 20 and 40 MW over the next five years by creating a bankable project structure attractive to the private sector. To make the contracts bankable, the government, its advisors, and the World Bank worked to ensure a fair and attractive allocation of risk. Finally, part of the SREP grant will be used to buy down the tariff in remote islands, where more extensive PV penetration will likely require additional storage capacity.
  • Publication
    Concentrating Solar Power in Developing Countries : Regulatory and Financial Incentives for Scaling Up
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-06-28) Kulichenko, Natalia; Wirth, Jens
    Concentrating Solar Thermal power (CST) has a tremendous potential for scaling up renewable energy at the utility level, diversifying the generation portfolio mix, powering development, and mitigating climate change. At present, different CST technologies have reached varying degrees of commercial availability. This emerging nature of CST means that there are market and technical impediments to accelerating its acceptance, including cost competitiveness, an understanding of technology capability and limitations, intermittency, and benefits of electricity storage. Many developed and some developing countries are currently working to address these barriers in order to scale up CST-based power generation. This report: a) analyzes and draws lessons from the efforts of some developed countries and adapts them to the characteristics of developing economies; b) assesses the cost reduction potential and economic and financial affordability of various technologies in emerging markets; c) evaluates the potential for cost reduction and associated economic benefits derived from local manufacturing; and d) suggests ways to tailor bidding models and practices, bid selection criteria, and structures for power purchase agreements (PPAs) for CST projects in developing market conditions. The report also presents a review of typical cost structures for parabolic trough and power tower plants, which was derived from projects developed or under preparation in Spain and the United States specifically for this report, and an in-depth assessment of the respective cost drivers.
  • Publication
    Regulatory and Financial Incentives for Scaling Up Concentrating Solar Power in Developing Countries
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06) Kulichenko, Nataliya; Wirth, Jens
    Concentrating solar thermal (CST) technologies have a clear potential for scaling up renewable energy at the utility level, thereby diversifying the generation portfolio mix, powering development, and mitigating climate change. A recent surge in demand for solar thermal power generation projects in several World Bank Group (WBG) partner countries shows that CST could indeed become an important renewable energy technology that would be able to provide an alternative to conventional thermal power generation based on the central utility model. At present, different CST technologies have reached varying degrees of commercial availability. This emerging nature of CST means that there are market and technical impediments to accelerating its acceptance, including cost competitiveness, an understanding of technology capability and limitations, intermittency, and benefits of electricity storage. Many developed and some developing countries are currently working to address these barriers in order to scale up CST-based power generation. Given the considerable growth of CST development in several WBG partner countries, there is a need to assess the recent experience of developed countries in designing and implementing regulatory frameworks and draw lesson that could facilitate the deployment of CST technologies in developing countries. Merely replicating developed countries' schemes in the context of a developing country may not generate the desired outcomes.
  • Publication
    Institutional Approaches to Electrification
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04) World Bank
    Energy poverty is a global problem: access to energy services is crucial to meet basic household needs, deliver and access public services, and generate income. Less than 10 percent of Sub-Saharan (SSA) rural households have access to electricity, with an overall access rate below 25 percent. One of the main obstacles for SSA electrification practitioners is the difficulty in obtaining practical and timely knowledge on how to overcome economic, technical, institutional, and political barriers to electrification in their day-to-day work. Launched in 2008, the Africa Electrification Initiative (AEI) seeks to create and sustain a living body of practical knowledge and a network of SSA practitioners for the design, development, and implementation of rural, peri-urban, and urban on-grid and off-grid electrification programs. AEI supports the network by organizing workshops and promoting online discussions and knowledge exchanges on topics important for its members. The workshop set out to address a number of relevant electrification topics previously identified through in-depth discussions and ongoing knowledge exchanges among a growing network of SSA practitioners. The workshop's main focus was on ground-level implementation of different institutional approaches to electrification, with particular focus on the experiences of rural energy agencies/rural energy funds (REAs/REFs) across SSA. The workshop lasted two and a half days, comprising 21 sessions, including regular session panels and discussion clinics with a longer duration. It also featured exhibition space for posters submitted by participating institutions, an expo of approved lighting products from the lighting Africa program, and an awards ceremony to recognize the best papers submitted by SSA electrification practitioners in response to the AEI call for papers.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Digital Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.
  • Publication
    Can a Market-Assisted Land Redistribution Program Improve the Lives of the Poor? Evidence from Malawi
    (2009-10-01) Datar, Gayatri; Del Carpio, Ximena; Hoffman, Vivian
    This paper uses a rural household survey dataset collected in 2006 and 2008 to investigate the impact of a market-based land resettlement project in southern Malawi. The program provided a conditional cash and land transfer to poor families to relocate to larger plots of farm land. The average treatment effect of the program is estimated using a difference-in-difference matching technique based on propensity score matching; qualitative information complement the analysis to ensure unobservable characteristics do not bias the findings. As expected, the results show a significant effect on landholdings and agricultural production, with land size increasing and maize production increasing by more than 100 kilograms relative to the control. However, the impacts on food security and asset holdings were mixed. Households that relocated great distances had systematically lower impacts than those households that stayed within their district of origin because they had to adapt to unfamiliar agro-ecological, cultural, and market environments. Impacts also varied across gender of the household head; female-headed beneficiary households increased their productive and consumption assets significantly, while male-headed households increased their asset holdings less so.
  • Publication
    Impact of Social Accountability Mechanisms on Achieving Service Delivery and Health Development Outcomes in Satara District, Maharashtra, India
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-11) Patel, Darshana; Shah, Parmesh; Islam, Moutushi; Agarwal, Sanjay
    Satara District Council has an average budget of roughly US$30 million/1,410 million Indian rupees to provide health, nutrition, drinking water, sanitation, and education infrastructure services to its citizens. While social and economic indexes indicate that Satara is one of the better-developed districts in Maharashtra, it still falls short in attaining expected service delivery outcomes. Irregular health services and suboptimal health outcomes such as malnourishment, unsafe drinking water, and lack of sanitation remained major challenges in the district because of the absence of community participation in planning and poor accountability on the part of public functionaries. The overall objective of this accountability intervention was to improve development outcomes by strengthening the delivery of services by key government departments and programs. The micro-planning (MP) aspect of the process allowed communities to set collective priorities and decide on investments while the community scorecards (CSC) part allowed regular monitoring, feedback, and dialogue between service users and providers.
  • Publication
    Data Transparency and GDP Growth Forecast Errors
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-04-19) Gatti, Roberta; Lederman, Daniel; Islam, Asif M.; Nguyen, Ha; Lotfi, Rana; Mousa, Mennatallah Emam
    This paper examines the role of a country’s data transparency in explaining gross domestic product growth forecast errors. It reports four sets of results that have not been previously reported in the existing literature. First, forecast errors—the difference between forecasted and realized gross domestic product growth—are large. Globally, between 2010 and 2020, the average same-year forecast error was 1.3 percentage points for the World Bank’s forecasts published in January of each year, and 1.5 percentage points for the International Monetary Fund’s January forecasts. Second, the Middle East and North Africa region has the largest forecast errors compared to other regions. Third, data capacity and transparency significantly explain forecast errors. On average, an improvement in a country’s Statistical Capacity Index, a measure of data capacity and transparency, is associated with a decline in absolute forecast errors. A one standard deviation increase in the log of the Statistical Capacity Index is associated with a decline in absolute forecast errors by 0.44 percentage point for World Bank forecasts and 0.49 percentage point for International Monetary Fund forecasts. The results are robust to a battery of control variables and robustness checks. Fourth, the role of the overall data ecosystem, not just those elements related to gross domestic product growth forecasting, is important for the accuracy of gross domestic product growth forecasts. Finally, gross domestic product growth forecasts from the World Bank are more accurate and less optimistic than those from the International Monetary Fund and the private sector.
  • Publication
    What Works to Reduce Inequalities in Higher Education? A Systematic Review of the (Quasi-)Experimental Literature on Outreach and Financial Aid
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04) Herbaut, Estelle; Geven, Koen
    Policy makers are increasingly searching for ways to allow more disadvantaged students to access and complete higher education. The quickly growing (quasi-)experimental literature on policy interventions in higher education provide the opportunity to identify the causal effects of these interventions on disadvantaged students and discuss inequality mechanisms at the last stage of the educational system. The paper reviews 75 studies and rigorously compares more than 200 causal effects of outreach and financial aid interventions on the access and completion rates of disadvantaged students in higher education. The paper finds that outreach policies are broadly effective in increasing access for disadvantaged students when these policies include active counseling or simplify the university application process, but not when they only provide general information on higher education. For financial aid, the paper finds that need-based grants do not systematically increase enrollment rates but only lead to improvements when they provide enough money to cover unmet need and/or include an early commitment during high school. Still, need-based grants quite consistently appear to improve the completion rates of disadvantaged students. In contrast, the evidence indicates that merit-based grants only rarely improve the outcomes of disadvantaged students. Finally, interventions combining outreach and financial aid have brought promising results, although more research on these mixed interventions is needed.