A new financial initiative, the Global Alliance for People and Planet, (GEAPP), was launched on 2 November at COP26 to accelerate investment in green energy transitions and renewable power solutions in developing and emerging economies worldwide.
The anchor organisations are The Rockefeller Foundation, the IKEA Foundation, and Bezos Earth Fund; investment partners include the African Development Bank Group, the Asian Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank, while country partners include Denmark, Italy and the UK.
Over the next decade, the Alliance aims to unlock USD100 billion in public and private capital and tackle three profound human problems simultaneously, namely power – providing one billion people with reliable, renewable energy; climate change – avoiding and averting four billion tons of carbon emissions; and jobs – building opportunities by creating, enabling, or improving 150 million jobs. It also opened a ‘global call’ for what it calls transformational country partnerships, inviting developing and emerging economies to apply for technical support and funding to advance ecosystems of clean energy projects.
While energy-poor countries are currently responsible for 25% of global CO2 emissions, their share of global emissions could grow to 75% by 2050, according to analysis published by the Alliance. Yet these countries currently only receive 13% of clean energy financing, despite representing nearly half of the world’s population. There are also 243 GW of coal plants being planned, permitted, or under construction in developing countries. If constructed, they would emit 38 billion tons of CO2 over the coming decades, a similar total to global emissions in 2020. To change this trajectory the Alliance has announced it is providing more than USD10 billion to focus on fossil fuel transitioning, grid-based renewables, and distributed renewables.
Other plans including significantly cutting the use of diesel generators and fossil fuelled power plants by harnessing the significant breakthroughs in technology that have made renewables the cheapest option for new power in more than two-thirds of the world. This would come under the heading of transformational country partnerships, helping to create more favourable investment environments and enable the delivery of national transformational programmes.
The is also an intent to increase investment and impact in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The Alliance is actively recruiting a diverse set of new partners to enable like-minded funders to pool resources and bring about transformational change, and facilitate the Alliance’s aim of multi-partner investments.
