Camco has been approved as an accredited entity by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) at the 27th Board meeting being held this week.

Fund manager Camco Clean Energy (Camco) has been approved as an accredited entity by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) at the 27th Board meeting being held this week.

As an accredited entity, Camco can now put forward proposals to the Fund and then oversee, supervise, manage and monitor these proposals when approved.

The GCF was set up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010 and is the world’s primary mechanism for helping developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and enhance their ability to respond to climate change.

The GCF’s second replenishment has recently exceeded $10 billion of pledges, and the Fund has already committed over $7 billion for climate action, with accredited entities ranging from the world’s largest development banks to micro organisations. According to its accreditation status, Camco will be able to propose private sector projects and programmes based in any developing country that are up to $250 million in size and are low to medium risk.

Commenting on the GCF Board’s approval, Geoff Sinclair, managing director at Camco, said: “We are delighted and proud to be welcomed as a GCF accredited entity and are committed to supporting its aim of creating a paradigm shift in climate action and driving forward the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Sinclair continued: “It’s taken two years and a lot of hard work to get to this point and this marks a huge achievement for us and I would like to thank the GCF Secretariat, Accreditation Panel and Miles Austin at Advisory 42 for working with us. Now it’s time to begin work on presenting several exciting and innovative concepts notes for the GCF’s consideration, all of which will support the kind of active engagement of the private sector that is critical for catalysing wide-scale climate action.”

Camco has been providing innovative financial solutions and management services to enable renewable energy development and deploy climate finance for more than 30 years. The company is based in offices in Accra, Helsinki, Johannesburg, London and Nairobi, and has on-the-ground experience and world-leading financial expertise in originating, developing, financing and implementing renewable energy and electrification projects in developing and established markets across the world.

Since 2015, Camco has been the investment manager of the UK Government-funded Renewable Energy Performance Platform, a £148 million ($195 million) fund to support the growth of small scale, distributed renewable energy in countries across Africa.

“Being a relatively small company gives us the freedom to be fast-acting and nimble, which are important qualities for developing the small and distributed renewable energy markets in developing countries, which often falls outside the scope of many of the larger GCF-accredited entities,” added Sinclair.

“Combined with our diverse team’s experience in finance and investment, risk management, development, engineering, policy, and sustainability, we have every confidence that we will prove to be a very useful new tool in the GCF toolbox.”

Originally published at esi-africa