Norway pledges $141m for clean energy in Ethiopia, Kenya and Liberia

Norway is to provide 850 million Norwegian crowns to fund clean energy projects in Ethiopia, Kenya and Liberia, finance that could unlock private sector investment in new types of carbon markets, the country’s government said on Monday. The African countries will get the cash as part of the Norway-led Energy+ Partnership, which aims to give the world’s poorest countries access to energy and encourage a new market-based system to limit emissions from global energy generation. Efforts to promote new means of financing cleaner energy in developing countries come at a time when investment in current U.N. mechanisms is shrinking fast.
“Part of the motivation for this funding is to develop pilot projects that could be eligible for future new market mechanisms and attract sufficient investment from the carbon market by 2015,” said Hans Olav Ibrekk, a policy director with Norway’s foreign ministry. Through the terms of the deal, which was signed last week at the Rio+20 climate talks, Ethiopia will get NOK 500 million to invest in low carbon energy, forests and agriculture.
Kenya has been pledged NOK 250 million to cut emissions from paraffin-based lamps and cookstoves, while Liberia could receive NOK 100 million to fund a 64-MW hydropower project to supply its capital Monrovia with low-carbon electricity. The Norwegian government said the finance to the three countries would only be made available as results are achieved, and is part of a wider NOK 1.8-billion a year contribution. The sectors targeted by the Norwegian investment could in theory be eligible to earn carbon credits through financing mechanisms that have yet to be elaborated or agreed at U.N. climate talks.