Expanding Matchmaking Platform for Sustainable Energy Financing

IRENA’s Sustainable Energy Marketplace expands to global coverage

Driven by investments in developed and emerging economies, the last decade has seen global investments in sustainable energy increase more than five-fold. Emerging and developing country markets still have enormous growth potential, but to tap into those opportunities, project owners and investors in the fields of renewable energy and energy efficiency need a simple way to connect — enter the Sustainable Energy Marketplace.

A virtual platform developed by IRENA, the Marketplace highlights promising low-carbon energy projects in developing countries and helps developers, financiers and service and technology providers connect to bring projects to fruition.

To capitalise on the Marketplace’s successful first two-years of operation in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and upon requests from IRENA Members, IRENA is now expanding the Marketplace platform to cover all developing and emerging markets — including Asia, Southeast Europe and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). 

A single integrated platform

The expanded Marketplace unveils new user functionality and an upgraded interface that improves the user experience and facilitates interaction between the different stakeholders to advance projects. Users registered on the platform can now view all available projects, financing instruments, and services and technologies from all regions through a single integrated portal.

The Marketplace features regional hubs where users can access relevant information relevant to investment in a specific region, including basic data and updates; country-level information on policies and regulations, projects and financing instruments; and the latest news, events, calls for proposals, reports. The Marketplace also provides access to IRENA project facilitation tools and tools and information developed by partners.

More than a marketplace

New features in the Marketplace allow stakeholders to join efforts in the development of renewable energy projects by sharing project pipelines, encouraging joint financing, sharing information and relying on the active support of the platform to the project developers.

Through the platform, IRENA conducts project assessments — providing a better understanding on the needs of projects. This is then the basis for matchmaking, link projects and financing institutions, as well as other relevant stakeholders depending on the specific needs of a project.

To access the online platform, market players — including project owners, financiers and service/technology providers — are required to create a profile. In addition, project owners and investors must add at least one project or instrument, respectively, to complete the registration process. Approved users can:

• Efficiently search for information of interest. Filtering, for example, by the specific criteria of investors, financing source or advisor, or according to a project’s needs.
• Easily find more information about relevant entities, projects, or financing instruments, with the ability to contact them.
• Communicate directly with IRENA on specific needs and interests.
• Access project development tools and data on markets, regulations and incentives.

Visit IRENA’s Sustainable Energy Marketplace to learn more about the platform and to register.