Deadline: 7-Sep-21
Applications are invited for the GET.invest Finance Catalyst to link projects and companies to financiers. It targets small- and medium-scale sustainable energy opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific region.
Their team provides advisory support in the areas of investment strategy, business case structuring, and accessing finance. They work through independent experts with extensive experience in both developing and getting projects funded.
Categories
- Investment strategy
- Geared at projects at a relatively early stage, but with concrete financing prospects, providing general guidance on the necessary steps of project development in order to ensure completeness and quality.
- Structuring support
- Advising on essential aspects of the business case and financing models, and supporting developers towards structuring their propositions in a way that corresponds with the needs and expectations of financiers.
- Finance access support
- To identify appropriate financing options for projects and to align project documentation with the specific requirements of financing and support instruments.
- Transaction support
- To assist with contractual negotiations during project preparation, for instance, aspects of the financing transaction, term sheets, contractual agreements with specialized advisory, or the fulfillment of conditions precedent.
Eligibility Criteria
The support of the GET.invest Finance Catalyst is available to applicants that meet the following criteria:
- Investment Size and Generation Capacity: Only projects and businesses with aggregated investments in the range of €250,000 to €70 million are eligible. For power generation projects a cumulative maximum generation capacity of 50 MW applies.
- Focus on renewable energy and energy efficiency: A major part of the proposed project or business must be a renewable energy system or energy efficiency equivalent, including energy storage, hydrogen and electrical appliances. Hybrid systems with a reasonable share of renewable generation capacity are also eligible. Clean cooking fuels (except for LPG) and appliances are also eligible.
- Business models: Business models need to aim at creating improved access to clean energy for end-users (consumers and businesses). Supported models may comprise electricity generation, electricity distribution (e.g. mini-grids and stand-alone systems), generation of mechanical energy and industrial / process heat or cooling, as well as hydrogen and energy storage projects. Also eligible are manufacturing and sales of clean cooking and electrical appliances for off-grid use. Moreover, manufacturing and sales of smart-data systems for energy use and grid management are eligible. Financial instruments such as PAYGo, leasing and investment funds are only eligible when developed for a concrete pool of projects (‚bundling‘). Electricity transmission projects or biofuels are not eligible.
- Revenue generating: Proposals must be conceptualised as revenue-generating and meet a minimum economic viability and sustainability threshold.
- Location: Applicants must be located in (or proceeds to be used in) sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and/or the Pacific region.
- Focus on private sector: Eligible applicants may be private sector developers (local and international), NGOs, universities, parastatal companies, government or research institutions. Ultimately, projects will need to have significant private-sector ownership (or equivalent) to allow for financing with debt or equity, possibly combined with other funding such as grants or public-sector contributions. Such private-sector engagement can be developed during the advisory support.
- Covid-19-related support
- For applicants requesting accelerated Covid-19-related, the criteria outlined under Generation capacity and ticket size are substituted with the following minimum criteria:
- the equivalent of €100,000 of turnover over the past 12 months as a proxy to justify the allocation of individual coaches and the associated cost;
- a minimum of 5 staff employed (salary or results-based) as a proxy for the job impact of the crisis, and as an indicator for the cash needs of the company;
- the business can demonstrate it had a sustainable funding plan at the end of February until 1 May 2020 (i.e. no funding gap before 1 May 2020).
- For applicants requesting accelerated Covid-19-related, the criteria outlined under Generation capacity and ticket size are substituted with the following minimum criteria:
For more information, visit https://www.get-invest.eu/finance-catalyst/apply/