Session 3.4: Financing and Partnerships for a Just Energy Transition

Inclusive energy transitions will not happen at scale without financing models that extend beyond large utilities and major developers to reach underserved communities, cooperatives, NGOs, and small-scale entrepreneurs. This session explores innovative financing and partnership approaches that make clean energy investment viable for actors typically excluded from conventional capital markets.

Presenters will examine how a national development finance institution can function as a market-builder rather than just a lender, drawing on experience illuminating more than five million households through Bangladesh's off-grid solar program; a micro-franchise model for solar PV leasing through local cooperatives that addresses the persistent challenges of payment collection, willingness to pay, and asset management that have limited rural electrification programs; and findings from Vietnam demonstrating the financial viability of integrated solar-aquaculture systems, where dual land use for solar generation and shrimp farming creates sustainable business models for vulnerable coastal communities.