Devex Invested: Is the GEAPP green energy alliance good for the money?

Gather ‘round, Invested readers. We’ve got a story for you.

It was almost time for networking drinks at the Nikkei-Financial Times Asia Green Tech Summit in Singapore last month when the founder of a renewable energy firm put up his hand.

Sitting in the audience, Atem Ramsundersingh, a former senior manager at the World Bank and now CEO of WEnergy Global, had a question for panelist Kitty Bu from the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, or GEAPP — the fund that launched in 2021 with $500 million commitments each from the IKEA Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and Bezos Earth Fund to support the clean energy transition.

Ramsundersingh, frustrated at GEAPP’s lack of engagement with his firm as it seeks loans for microgrids in the Philippines, told Bu “I hear rumors … you don’t have the money.”

Bu, GEAPP’s vice president for Southeast Asia, thanked Ramsundersingh for his “blunt” question, but didn’t exactly give a straight answer.

“That’s part of the conversation that we can have in a private setting, but I don’t think that is the part of the business I can disclose to the public,” she said from the stage. “What I can say is the commitment from Rockefeller, IKEA, and Bezos Earth Fund is $500 million each.”

Then something strange happened: the audience Q&A segment went missing in the video playback of the session. It was edited out to make it appear that moderator Mercedes Ruehl’s conclusion was segueing from the previous speaker, when in fact she was responding to Bu’s answer to Ramsundersingh.

So, does GEAPP have the money? A spokesperson for the alliance tells us that it is “adequately funded for its mission,” adding that “we are, like all similar organisations, of course always looking for more partners to join us.” The spokesperson also points us to the alliance’s latest impact report about its work in eight focus countries, which does not include the Philippines.

IKEA Foundation tells us it has so far disbursed $100 million of its $500 million pledge. Rockefeller Foundation says that from 2021 through 2022 it had contributed “just under $200 million to GEAPP through direct grants and in-kind support,” with 2023 figures to come later this year. Bezos Earth Fund has not responded to our query.

And as for that missing segment of the video? The Financial Times wrote back to us to say that it was removed due to an “oversight in the editing room” and has now been restored.

When we asked GEAPP if they had asked FT to edit out the segment, GEAPP wrote back that “It is entirely the FT's decision what they publish on their channels.” Quite — but that did not answer our question.

Know more about how GEAPP is getting on? Get in touch at vince.chadwick@devex.com.

Background reading: How a new $100B green energy alliance will work (Pro)

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JETPs, just do it

There has been plenty of discussion about country platforms coming out of the recent World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings, and few people are better qualified on the topic than John Murton.

Now Standard Chartered Bank’s senior sustainability adviser, he spent three years as the U.K. government’s COP 26 envoy, where he led negotiations on the South African and Vietnamese JETPs — or just energy transition partnerships.

In an opinion piece for Devex this week, Murton says the JETPs are one of the leading examples of the country platform idea — seeking to go beyond single projects to apply concessional finance at a national level. His takeaways?

• JETPs are challenging: “Multinational investment plans of this size, timeframe, and ambition have never been attempted before and so each is adopting a learning-by-doing approach.”

• There are bright spots: Regulatory changes helped the South African government sign off on 14.5GW of new renewable energy projects in 2023, with a further 51.5GW of projects in the pipeline — compared to 54GW of total currently installed capacity across all energy types in 2022.

• Donors are key: “If parties can embrace the country platform concept of cooperation rather than competition between donors, we stand a better chance of successfully delivering on shared climate goals.”

Opinion: How blended finance at country level can deliver on the SDGs 

A major dilemma

And speaking of country platforms, my colleague Adva Saldinger asked U.N. Development Programme chief Achim Steiner last week how the recent focus on country platforms for multilateral development banks to work in low-income countries ties in with his organization’s long-standing effort to stand up Integrated National Financing Frameworks to coordinate donor efforts. It seems she hit the mark.

“You've put your finger on a major dilemma,” Steiner said. “I think one of the things we do have to address right now is how do we get away from institutionally driven plans and platforms that essentially simply either duplicate [other platforms] or do not necessarily represent the perspective of that country.”

“If you're writing your national climate strategy or financing plan with a template of how to borrow from the World Bank or one of the regional development banks, it's not going to be the same as a nationally determined contribution that articulates a pathway to [the] 1.5 [degrees Celsius target] of your country, written out of your reality, your possibilities.”

Listen: UNDP's Achim Steiner on why the G20 should care much more about debt

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Europe’s new course?

A 20-page thunderclap hit European development watchers last week when Politico published the European Commission's draft vision for how its development policy should look for the next five years.

The document sets out a plan for European Union development assistance to be recast as “investment” in a three-part offer to countries, together with trade and macroeconomic assistance. It speaks of the need to "[engage] our strategic partners with a policy mix driven by economic interest, and less so by more traditional and narrow development and foreign policy approaches."

NGOs were up in arms, decrying a “truly shocking” betrayal of the EU’s treaty obligation to make fighting poverty the main focus of its development assistance. But the commission has been speaking like this for years.

We got outgoing EU development commissioner Jutta Urpilainen to give her take on the document. Sadly, it was rather generic. But Urpilainen is neither the author nor the audience for the brief which is designed to be read by the new batch of politicians who will helm the EU executive from later this year through to 2029.

Beyond the rhetoric, in this piece for Devex Pro members, I try to look at what the commission might concretely do in the critical coming years to fundamentally shift its development work: More sovereign lending capacity for the European Investment Bank? A return to tied aid? Working in fewer countries? Watch this space.

Read: How to read Europe's future development vision (Pro)

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What we’re reading

The White House knows that the global south has a point. [Financial Times]

Greenwashing: 4 in 10 “sustainable” funds invest in fossil fuel companies. [Follow the Money]

The Asian Development Bank is backing new coal, despite climate pledges. [Inclusive Development International]