Commissioner Piebalgs: Creating an "energy revolution" across the developing world

European Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, opened today the Sustainable Energy for All Committee meeting taking place in Brussels. He reconfirmed the European Union and the biggest supporter of the SE4ALL initiative and reminded of our commitment to help developing countries provide access to sustainable energy services for 500 million people by 2030. Strong political ownership, ensuring the necessary implementation capacity is in place and delivering financing and ensuring rapid results on the ground were mentioned by the Commissioner as the three key conditions to achieve that all-important enabling environment for investments. He also presented a brand new initiative called –the Electrification Financing Initiative, or ElectriFI : " Through this innovative instrument, EU grants will complement private financing, bridging potential financial gap in order to make a project bankable. This will provide the security investors and banks are expecting to boost investments. If investments are successful, the grants will be converted into loans, at concessional rate, and the EU will be “reimbursed”. We will then be able to reinvest our grants in new projects, allowing more and more people to get access to electricity services. ElectriFi is more than a financing proposal, in that it puts forward a business model to leverage more private investments and involve more key stakeholders in all areas of expertise on a global level."