This webinar – the 2^nd in a series of four webinars – will feature banks and financing specialists from South and Southeast Asia who have enabled local banks and local developers in the region to make financing available for small-scale hydro mini-grids. Using specific examples, speakers will present:

• Why and how local banks are critical to replication of sustainable hydro mini-grids
• Incentives for local banks in lending to hydro mini-grids and local developers
• How local banks can build internal capacity to lend to mini-grids
• How local developers can develop the necessary skills to access local bank financing
• How banking regulatory challenges can be overcome
• Roles of government and donors help to accelerate the process of enabling local bank financing.

For more thematic background, please refer here.

Speaker: 

DINESH DULAL - Department Head of Energy and Development Organization Department at NMB Bank Ltd. Kathmandu, Nepal

KAPILA SUBASINGHE - Vice President (Specialized Project Lending)/Head of Consulting, DFCC Bank

MARGARITA MANZO - Energy Finance Specialist 

Moderator: 

RANISHA BASNET

Thematic Discussant

DIPTI VAGHELA - Manager Hydro Empowerment Network (HPNET)

Topic and main goal of this years workshop is to bring together experts and practitioners in the field of energy access in order to create new ideas of making electricity more accessible to global regions with limited access to it. A set of working papers will be produced and the participants work in collaboration to identify strategies and creating synergies for the goal. 

The "Innovation Lab" is non-traditional workshop format where the participants reflect their goals and find ways of collaboration for achieving them. This interesting workshop will be launched by the Affordable Energy for Humanity (AE4H) "Global Change Initiative", a global consortium of researchers and practitioners with the commitment to end energy poverty and pursuing sustainable development through clean technologies. 

Find out more about the workshop AE4H 2019 Innovation Lab

The overall aim was to demonstrate the viability of an innovative business model that makes use of impact investment and grants for a community managed irrigation system using a Photovoltaic Pumping System (PVPS). This goal orientated investment promoted commercial vegetable farming and strengthening of the vegetable market chain in the concerning Nepalese villages and established a best-practice example for future public-private partnerships in the context of financing clean energy technology. 

The Nepalese Government has recognized the benefit of such business model and provided the opportunity for 60% subsidies of such investment. The remaining 40% are levied by private sector investment participation, where the given business model creates a “Win-Win-Situation” for both the private investors and poor farmers receiving access to clean-energy technology. 

This technology combined with the innovative business model can be beneficial to over 60% smallholder farmers still relying on subsistence farming and watering their crops with monsoon rain. Effectively this can lead to a displace of unsustainable diesel engines, addresses issues with unreliable grid electricity and reaches out to poor farmers who did not have energy access yet. However, encouragement of private investment is required in the following years in order to complement public financed subsidies issued by the Nepalese government. 

As private investors are not familiar with the communities and the technology, Practical Action promotes and showcases the business model to investors and makes ground for the provision of capital investment into a new market of sustainable technology in agricultural farmlands. At the end of the project, learning-sharing workshops were organised by Practical Action in Hetauda (Makwanpur) and Dhading Besi (Dhading district). The technology and the presented business model impressed participants and the local government, committing to the financial support of the project. 

More information about the project can be found here: Community Managed Energy Service for Vegetable Market Chain (SEPS11)

Further information about Practical Action: Practical Action