Concept Paper for an Innovative Renewable Energy Public-Private Partnership Model

Governance-Health-Education Energy Access

(GHEEA)

1. Problem, challenge, and opportunity

As national governments bear the greatest responsibilities in addressing the problems of climate change through robust policies and programs, they remain the best partner in leading the private sector in the just energy transition. A demanding collaborative strategy for developing countries in Sub Saharan Africa is the gradual decommissioning of distributed fossil generation (DFG) power plants and replacement with distributed renewable energy and storage systems (DRESS) across off and weak grid regions. The anticipated outcome is not only to create and increase affordable clean energy access for service productive use of energy (SPUE) in governance, healthcare, and educational facilities, but to advance decarbonization support towards reducing global warming to at most 1.5 degree Celsius by 2050 as per the United Nations Paris Agreement and mitigation commitments in most countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDC).

In addition to private sector usage of fossil fuel generators, the Government deploys and runs a high number of distributed fossil power generators in across weak and off grid regions to power their decentralized offices and social service institutions serving rural and off-grid communities. Prevalent sites are local government administrative buildings, healthcare centers, and educational institutions. They are often challenged with affordable and reliable power supplies due to the high costs of operations and maintenance (O&M), especially fuel supplies. To respond to these resulting in problems of incremental GHG emission, high O&M cost, and unreliable electricity access, an investment driven public-private partnership (PPP) business model is conceived and styled Governance-Health-Education Energy Access (GHEEA).

2. Strategies, aims and outcomes

GHEEA business model supports the supply of equitable and cost-efficient clean electricity to government’s operated public facilities providing governance and social services such as local government administrative buildings, healthcare centers , and Schools through deployment of DRESS power supply systems with potential for future grid interconnections. The model develops mechanisms to negotiate Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) trading MOU among the Government, financial intuitions, and energy project developers/service providers with mutual investment roles and responsibilities. The intent is to create a public-private partnership space that attracts:

1) Government entity with DFG facilities as project off-taker to lead the energy transition.

2) Financial institutions interested in clean energy financing as lenders

3) Clean energy project developers as service providers.

The model creates an ecosystem of clean energy financing and project

development where the public sector acts as off-taker and a private developer would secure project financing agreement from local commercial banks to increase electricity access in Government’s SPUE facilities. This tripartite-like PPP will design an electricity supply mechanism to secure a) PPA, b) Financing Agreement (FA), and c) Repayment Guarantee (RG).

The expected outcomes of the partnership are:

1) Creates jobs and develops skilled manpower in targeted communities

2) Reduces carbon emission footprint in public sector operations

3) Increases clean energy access and institutional productivity with reliable electricity

4) Spurs economic activities through clean jobs for youth and women with solar energy projects

5) Motivates at least 40% initial female participation in solar energy career to ensure gender equity

6) Reduces Government’s spending on diesel power O&M by at least 50% annually

3. DRESS preferences over DFG

DFG supplies electricity to almost every government run public facility/office located in weak and off grid regions through use of expensive fuel and periodic maintenance parts, but operations at these public facilities/institutions are often challenged by irregular electricity supply. This is due to largely high cost of fossil fuel,

and high periodic maintenance cost. Service productivity is often hindered by the lack of electricity when needed. Though the government makes budgetary allotments for these fossil fuel generations, they are either inadequate for the budget period or mismanaged. Converting those allotments into revenue streams for a DRESS adoption suggests a business case, where PPA generated by a DRESS system will be sold to the government for clean and reliable supply to a given public facility. The PPA would be the result of an investment financing agreement reached between the Government, the commercial bank, and the local clean energy systems developer.

4. Target beneficiaries and impact

GHEEA business model creates investment partnerships to increase clean electricity access for sustained and productive governance and social services deliveries to weak and off grid communities with SPUE facilities operated by Government and private entities. In countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, most of the poor and underserved population are dominantly located in off grid regions where DFG are deployed. To consider Liberia as a case, providing regular electricity in weak and off grid local administrative buildings, healthcare facilities, and educational institutions will maximize productive services to about 46.43 % rural population (2023, World Bank Report) with effective governance actions, efficient healthcare to patients, and improved learning environment for students.

5. Potential to scale

GHEEA is a scalable PPP model with national and international scalable prospects. Potentials to scale have three drivers:

1) Government’s climate change mitigation commitments on GHG reduction and increased renewable energy mix through displacing distributed fossil power generators in public and private operated institutions.

2) The high potential of Government operations in offgrid counties to adopt replacing fossil generators in last mile offices and social services facilities with distributed renewable energy resources.

3) An investment window that attracts private sector project developers and financial institutions to partner with the Government in the clean energy access space. With these drivers, the model can be scaled firstly in a country by replacing every government operated fossil power generation in weak and off grid locations with DRESS infrastructures. These replacements can be done in magnitude of kilowatt capacity and geographical expansion. The success rate obtained by the three drivers would determine replicating the model across Sub Saharan Africa.

Transco-CLSG 1300km sub-regional electric transmission grid of the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP) passes through most rural parts of Liberia from Cote D’Ivoire to Sierra Leone and Guinea with connections currently in some populated rural cities. This also creates an investment opportunity for DRESS deployment where possible interconnections and future net metering would spur economic returns on offgrid energy investments.

6. Pilot Project Immediate Funding

The GHEEA model needs grants to finance its pilot project and technical assistance. It anticipates achieving three key outcomes:

1. Proof of concept (cop) that can be used to attract future result-based debt or equity financing from local commercial banks to motivate Government and private facilities as off takers

2. A long-term commitment from the Government of Liberia to ensure replacing all distributed fossil power generators in weak and off grid public facilities with renewable energy sources.

3. A result based Energy as a Service (EaaS) financing framework to be derived among the parties where:

Government as party A, through its three sector agencies as off taker (end users).

Project developer as party B, who sells the generated PPA.

Financial institution/lender as party C who receives the repayment guarantee (RG) to finances a DRESS project .

This partnership model aligns with expectations of Liberia 2009 National Energy Policy’s Renewable Energy Strategy Master Plan (RESMP) 2016-2030, specifically Beyond the Grid Program Initiative Two (BTG.2) which supports electrification of public facilities to include health centers, schools, etc.

The proposed pilot project is to electrify and digitize facility management information systems at three public facilities in an off-grid administrative district in Bong County, Liberia, West Africa. It targets a district administrative office, healthcare center, and Junior/Senior high School. The electrification and information digitization of these

institutions/facilities will increase productivity in service deliveries. This pilot project will help develop policy and program framework in coordination with the Rural Renewable Energy Agency (RREA). It will also test adoption of a PV+Storage technology product by LEMA Power or other affordable products to assess and evaluate public-private partnership and service productive use capabilities in Liberia. The next would be setting up digital information management systems with computers and internet services. The Pilot and Technical Assistance (PTA) project concept is found here.

7.About Concept Paper developer

Jimmy Nuwelnu Nyanwapolu is the innovator of GHEEA and author of the concept paper. He hails from

Liberia, West Africa where he worked with Government and development organizations for over 15 years in social services, program management, electric utility systems planning, and offgrid renewable energy. He served as Clean Energy Innovator Fellow with the U.S. Department of Energy, assigned with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC), Washington State. He led and coordinated its Equity Docket proceedings aimed at developing equity policy statements and action plans to guide the Commission’s energy and services equity regulations. He holds an MBA in Management from Cuttington University in Liberia, and an MBA with Energy specialty from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Contacts:

Mobile_ 1704.773.8249

Email_jnyanwapolu@direct-energy.org