Finance

The Energy Efficiency Financial Institutions Group (EEFIG) has just published its final report from its working group on industry. It is a wake-up call that action needs to be taken urgently. Europes industry must decarbonise to unprecedented levels at a high pace.

A lack of effective and automated tools is holding firms back from properly collecting and sharing data. Sustainability data should be of high quality, auditable, transparent, comparable, screened for errors and data gaps. Firms should strongly consider optimizing their data to generate actionable insights.

Emerging markets and developing economies (EM&DEs) account for nearly half of the total global greenhouse gas emissions. The volume of capital currently being deployed to transition these countries to lower-carbon sources of energy is insufficient given the size of the climate challenge.

It will be essential to decarbonize industry. Debt financers, particularly banks, do not consider energy-efficient industrial equipment as an attractive lending proposition. Public-funded unsecured subordinated debt financing could be used to help.

Industrial decarbonization will require massive amounts of capital investment over the next 30 years. Venture capitalists believe there are significant returns to be made for first movers but also institutional investors and asset managers are in favor of playing a role.

Vietnams energy consumption has been soaring in the past decade. The majority of its electricity is generated from burning coal, natural gas, and oil. Currently, the industrial sector of Vietnam constitutes up to 47 percent of national electricity consumption.

Spearmint Energy founder Andrew Waranch says we are at a tipping point. Texas power grid froze in 2021 after a surge of severe winter storms battered state. He says we need massive investment in our energy infrastructure, especially in energy storage.

The De-risking Energy Efficiency Platform (DEEP) is an open-source database for energy efficiency investments performance monitoring and benchmarking. It now includes data on more than 17,000 energy efficiency projects in buildings and industry from 30 data providers.

Digital finance is increasingly demonstrating its ability to overcome key barriers for smaller scale project finance. Few exist today but a growing number is in development driven by the need to mobilize private capital to support sustainable growth.