A Renewable Energy Platform for Africa
Catalyzing and scaling SDGs and building resilient communities through clean energy projects
Our Mission
Initiated by the founders of the award-winning development team of Gigawatt Global, Gigawatt Impact is our non-profit strategy to scale renewable energy in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and vulnerable rural communities across the world. Gigawatt Impact leverages venture philanthropy to develop utility-scale, community-based green renewable energy projects, increasing these communities’ financial and environmental independence and combatting racial and economic injustice.
Using the most innovative, ethical and proven toolkit in the industry, our veteran team applies skills perfected by Gigawatt Global and deploys them in this new non-profit model to bring clean energy opportunities where they are needed most. Our goal is to foster economic and social development, fight climate injustice, expand weak grids, create climate resilience in vulnerable communities, and eliminate the use of diesel generation.
Gigawatt Impact promotes large and small renewable energy projects by consulting, contracting, grant-giving, and supervising development with our team of experts, in collaboration with local communities and leaders. Our team has over ten years of experience, with a track record and pipeline of projects across three continents.
Gigawatt Impact’s Transformational Channels:
Powering Hope
Working with local communities to develop the initial stages of green energy projects that can transform lives, while empowering local leaders to take ownership of these initiatives, in order to bring projects to be shovel-ready.
Powering Food
The Abundance Initiative, tailored to agricultural communities, aims to triple farmer incomes by providing a community-based, solar-powered agro-processing zone to zero out agricultural waste with milling, storage, refrigeration, drying, canning, roasting, and more.
Powering Education
Creating green energy projects with universities all over the world to power these institutions with clean energy, while providing electricity to surrounding communities as well. We envision our solar plants as living laboratories for training thousands of engineering students for jobs in emerging green markets, while introducing new technologies, like agro-voltaics. Our first initiative is in partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, in 19 Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the United States, followed by African universities.
Powering Peace
The most vulnerable people in the world generally live in places of conflict and insecurity, and are burdened with racial, economic, and environmental injustices. The Gigawatt Impact team, led by a CEO who has been nominated by 12 African countries for the Nobel Peace Prize, is uniquely qualified to deploy in places and ways that promote stability, advance peace, and foster economic and social justice through energy access. We have a strong track record in some of the most volatile countries in Africa and the Middle East, including countries with potential for joining an expanded Abraham Accords.
Empowering Women
Leveraging the Village+ model, off-grid technologies can transform the dignity and livelihood of the world’s poorest women, with a comprehensive package that includes home biogas, parabolic heaters, and vacuum tubes for cooking, low pressure drip irrigation, and micro Agro-voltaics for efficient farming and more. These technologies offer women in marginalized communities opportunities for stable income, allowing them to support themselves and their families in the face of worsening environmental conditions.
The Challenge – Financing Power
Providing power to the 600 million people in Africa without electricity – and millions more like them around the world – is an urgent imperative of the international community. Energy poverty often leads to malnutrition and hunger, as well as to lack of education and economic opportunity, and sustains the racial and economic injustices of the past. The climate crisis exacerbates many of these challenges, especially for people living in Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
Despite many efforts and programs for the past decade, less than 1% of climate finance reaches sub-Saharan Africa, according to BloombergNEF. International development financing institutions, capital markets, and equity sponsors are eager to finance high-quality, bankable green energy projects on the continent. Exponentially more project financing is available than there are projects to receive it.
Yet for the past ten years, the international community and developers have pursued a project-by-project approach which is simply not scalable, and neither efficient nor effective. Lack of progress on the ground, and the lack of deployment of project finance in green energy proves this. And there are not enough charitable funds to make a meaningful dent in the energy poverty of the region, unless they are leveraged to unlock massive private sector financing in a blended finance model.
The Solution – Venture Philanthropy
Only private capital can meet the enormous needs on such a scale. Strategic venture philanthropy is the solution: it can galvanize private and institutional investors seeking to invest in renewables in developing countries. A non-profit approach can fund green field development (personnel, studies and other pre-development and development costs), unlocking available investment funds for ‘ripe’ projects at financial close.
With over a gigawatt of creative energy in a dozen projects under development in 10 LDCs in Africa, this non-profit approach will enable philanthropic grant monies to galvanize massive project financing – enough to transform the landscape of energy production and the lives of millions of people across the world. Our projects are at the forefront in most of the fragile regions in which we operate, and we work with communities most affected by climate change, which are often BIPOC communities. Our core team also collaborates with local African developers and independent power producers (IPPs).
Trillions of dollars await deployment in renewable energy investment, especially in emerging markets. Our impact-oriented NGO can continue to scale and galvanize massive investment in the most vulnerable communities in the USA, Africa and the world. These include solar power for historically black colleges and universities in the American south and adjacent black farmers, as well as utility-scale solar fields where they are needed most; Africa’s first wind-solar co-located facility for day and night green energy production; the continent’s first community-based agro-processing center, two last-mile generation projects, and the first African island with 100% green energy production – all of which empower women in agriculture and renewables and drastically reduce diesel use in fragile states.
Donors will enjoy the benefits of a significant immediate pipeline in a platform, an expert development team, and the leverage of project finance for their impact venture philanthropy. With the option of reimbursement from projects for some expenses and pre-development costs, we intend to create a self-sustaining model, to be set up more formally with our anchor partner.
With over a gigawatt of creative energy in a dozen projects under development in 10 LDCs in Africa, this non-profit approach will enable philanthropic grant monies to galvanize massive project financing – enough to transform the landscape of energy production and the lives of millions of people across Africa and the world. Our projects are also highly catalytic and the first ones in most of the fragile countries or regions in which we operate. The core team works together with local developers, community leaders and other independent power producers (IPPs) to bring complex projects to fruition.
Successful proofs-of-concept
Rwanda Solar Field
8.5 MW grid-connected solar field at the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village. Received $715,000 in grants, which unlocked $23 million in project finance for the SPV.
Burundi Solar Field
8.6 MW grid-connected solar field at Mubuga Village. Received $300,000 in grants, which unlocked $16 million in project finance for the SPV.
Burundi Light Islands
In the center of Bujumbura and Gitega, Burundi, these solar-powered light islands extend local working hours and enhance personal safety, especially of women.
Hospitals in Kissi Country, Kenya and Jenin.
Two hospitals are now powered by clean energy, lessening the dependence on diesel and ensuring power during black-outs.
Pipeline of projects in development
Projects in the pipeline include doubling the size of the solar plant in Burundi and the construction of solar fields in South Sudan, Comoros, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Zambia, Djibouti, Somalia and elsewhere, as well as last mile generation, solar/wind hybrid projects, solar-powered agro-processing facilities, desalination, and more.
Background
There is no doubt about the importance of green energy for the people and advancement of the LDCs, as outlined above. With that in mind, Gigawatt Global set about to meet this critical need back in 2011, bringing our team’s expertise from building 12 fields in Israel to sub-Saharan Africa. Even with our success in building the region’s first solar fields, in Rwanda and Burundi, and the projects currently under development, more than a decade later very few climate investments and developers have made the kind of strides necessary to allow the region to blossom. And those who have succeeded, like Gigawatt Global, are dis-incentivized to do other projects since the development process is long and arduous, grant facilities usually only pay third-party costs, profit margins are dwindling or unstable, and corruption further slows down an already challenging process. Venture philanthropy is the best way to jump-start the pre-development stage and de-risk the project investment cycle, bringing projects to sufficient maturity when financing is ready to be deployed. Hence the creation of Gigawatt Impact.
For more information: Aryeh Green – aryeh@gigawattglobal.com
EIN number: 99-2763022