Applications open for Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) Programme

Deadline: 26-May-24
Applications are now open for PREO grant funding to support renewable energy innovators in Pacific Island Countries-focused projects.

The Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) programme is a demand-led, productive use of renewable energy (PURE) programme stimulating partnerships, innovation and learning to address the needs and improve the livelihoods of communities in of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Pacific Island Countries. PREO’s mission is to enable businesses to harness clean energy to improve incomes, build climate resilience and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Since 2019, PREO has been supported by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid via the Transforming Energy Access platform and delivered by the Carbon Trust and Mercy Corps Energy 4 Impact. As of April 2023, PREO had funded 34 grants to private sector and non-profit enterprises across 12 African countries.

This open call is the first expansion of PREO grant funding beyond sub-Saharan Africa, to fund Pacific Island Countries-focused projects, with the support of UK aid through the Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform.

PREO also provides technical assistance through the PREO Technical Assistance Facility to help innovators execute PURE-related initiatives and enterprise development, and to improve their activities’ viability, efficacy, and local impact. They draw on the pool of experts involved in the Transforming Energy Access platform to address key knowledge gaps and offer advice.

Objectives

• The core objective of the catalytic grants is to support the development of innovative PURE models in Pacific Island countries that are likely to be scalable and replicable as well as to support economic growth and job creation in local value chains.
• The aim is to test different PURE models, in different geographical locations, generate knowledge and evidence, and create demonstration effects to help build sustainable PURE markets at scale. The demonstration effects draw from the knowledge and evidence about the geographies, value chains, operating models and technologies that have proven to be successful in application. The PREO Programme will thus co-fund and support “locally relevant, demand-led projects” generating usable knowledge that can be disseminated for the benefit of the entire PURE ecosystem. The vision is to promote these successful demonstrations to development actors, so that they constructively influence the policy and development landscape, attract further investment, and translate local economic development successes into impact at scale.
• Achievement of the core objective of the catalytic grants contributes to the broader outcomes of PREO, which requires the funded projects to contribute to:
  • Improving livelihoods through entities that increase their workforce and expand their customer/enduser reach;
  • Demonstrating positive social and economic impact for actors across the value chain, resulting from increased productivity, throughput and/or value addition through the productive use of clean energy;
  • Stimulating the entry of financial institutions and capital providers into the PURE market through improved economics, scalability and financial sustainability;
  • Creating an evidence base and disseminating knowledge to PURE stakeholders, including public and private sector investors, innovators, donors, policy makers and enterprises; and
  • Empowering women engaged in PURE activities or as end-users of the PURE activities.

Priority Sectors

• Agro Processing: renewably-powered milling, drying, oil press, egg incubation and pulping;
• Cooling: positive (between 0°C and 15°C) and negative (between -15°C and 0°C) temperature renewably-powered cold storage, freezing, and milk chilling
• Renewably-powered water solutions
• E-Waste Recycling: end-of-life PURE products, as well as supportive renewable energy assets;
• Textiles: manufacturing or mending shoes and sewing clothes commercially
• E-Mobility: electric transport including electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers and boats (among others)
• Education: renewably-powered appliances for educational use
• Healthcare: renewably-powered appliances for medical use
• Hospitality: renewably-powered systems or appliances for hospitality use
• Information and communication technology (ICT): use of digital technology such as computers or phones to manage and process information and to communicate with others. It is used in various fields, including education, business, healthcare, entertainment, and many others
• Renewably-powered Street lighting

Energy Sources

• Energy sources should be renewable for example biogas, geothermal, hydropower, solar PV, solar thermal, wind power.

Funding Information

• The objective is to fund up to 8 catalytic grants from the financing received from UK aid. They expect grant requests to be in the range of £50,000-£150,000 but will consider grant requests of up to £200,000 in value.

Project Timelines and Duration 

• The Competition is not prescriptive in terms of timelines and milestones for the proposed projects and applicants are invited to propose these in their applications. However, projects should be designed to make optimal use the anticipated actively supported period of 12-24 months from the commencement date. The anticipated commencement date for the projects is estimated to be October 2024.

Key Performance Indicators

• The KPIs for each of the PREO Programme objectives are detailed below. It should be noted that grant recipient projects may have unique KPIs applicable to the product or service provided by the project, determined by the nature of the operation. For example, it may be appropriate for a healthcare project to measure and report the number of female end-users reached, while an agro-processing enterprise could measure and report productivity enhancement or increased revenues as a result of PURE activities.
• Therefore, it is the responsibility of the applicant to determine their project-specific KPIs that will be measured and reported to PREO. During the contracting phase, successful applicants will be required to provide this information at agreed intervals, necessitating all projects to have a monitoring and reporting framework in place. In addition to the project-specific KPIs, PREO will collect cross-cutting KPIs applicable to all projects:
  • KPI 1 Economic Performance
    • Loan-based projects: unit margin of enterprise providing loans to end users for PURE equipment (reported as %) representing profit earned.
    • Service model projects: simple payback on PURE infrastructure (reported as months/years) representing the time to recover the initial investment.
  • KPI 2 Follow-on Funding
    • Capital raised by PURE enterprises supported by PREO from public and private funders. As well as enabling them to calculate the amount of finance a PREO grant has leveraged, KPI 2 also enables them to measure the growth and maturity of a company as it attracts private sector investment over time. This is usually described as seed funding, Series A, B and C stages, with the amount at each stage determined by factors such as market size, company potential, current revenues and management.
  • KPI 3 Green Job Creation
    • Number of new, sustainable, long-term, safe jobs created and income growth enabled (where relevant and reported as %) by PURE enterprises as a direct result of PREO support.
  • KPI 4 Fossil Fuel Avoidance 
    • Transitioning productive sectors away from diesel- and petrol-powered energy to renewable energy sources, thereby reducing CO2 emissions and pollution.
  • KPI 5 Knowledge Building
    • Create an evidence base and disseminate knowledge to PURE stakeholders.

Geographic Scope

• PREO will only accept applications for projects to be delivered in the following Pacific Island Countries – Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu.
• Locally-led projects are encouraged, but applicants can be based outside of the geographic scope, provided the project has a local partner or office located in one of the target countries.

Eligibility Criteria

• Any legally registered and physically established business or non-profit organisation may apply for funding related to a project to be delivered in one of the Pacific Island countries mentioned in the geographic scope.
• The enterprise must propose a business model or concept centred around the productive use of renewable energy sources as described in the energy sources section.
• Applicants must clearly outline the business model including co-financing opportunities, the novelty of the concept or business model, how the grant will enhance job creation and promote gender inclusion, equity ownership including local ownership and involvement of local manufacturing, and the expected reduction in emissions.

For more information, visit PREO.