Capacity Building and Training Workshop on Project Finance and Facilitation in the Caribbean Region

Saint Lucia

IRENA-OECS Host Workshop on Caribbean Project Finance and Facilitation

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), in collaboration with the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), hosted a three-day Capacity-Building and Training Workshop on Project Finance and Facilitation in the Caribbean, with particular focus on renewable energy project finance.

The shift to renewable energy is a central pillar of the Caribbean’s response to climate change and is critical for the region’s energy security. While renewable energy project development in small island developing states has increased, many technically sound projects falter at the financing stage due to factors rendering a project financially unfeasible.

The workshop, which ran from 22-24 November at the Harbor Club, Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, aimed at enhancing the capacities of local actors in different Caribbean countries, in structuring financing deals for renewable energy projects. Ultimately, the goal is to increase the number of renewable energy projects financed in the region. It exposed participants to IRENA’s project facilitation tools and the fundamentals of project finance and allowed them to test what they have learnt through case studies and interactive exercises.

IRENA supported the workshop under its Climate Investment Platform (CIP), a demand-driven vehicle facilitating the development and scale-up of renewable energy technologies through tailored technical assistance to Member countries. The OECS, for its part collaborated with IRENA on the Eastern Caribbean Solar Challenge, an initiative under the Caribbean NDC Finance Initiative, which supports OECS Member States in their efforts to meet climate-change objectives.

Workshop participants included representatives of government ministries, financial institutions and project developers from the OECS Member States of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, as well as Belize, the Dominican Republic, Suriname and Guyana.

IRENA, with a membership of 168 countries, is the leading global intergovernmental agency driving the global energy transition and provides state of the art data and analyses on technology, innovation, policy, finance and investments. IRENA drives the widespread adoption and sustainable use of all forms of renewable energy, including bioenergy, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar and wind energy in the pursuit of sustainable development, energy access, and energy security, for economic and social resilience and prosperity and a climate-proof future.

OECS is an International Inter-governmental Organisation dedicated to regional integration in the Eastern Caribbean. The body has eleven members states comprising of the States of Antigua and Barbuda, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, with the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Martinique and Guadeloupe as associate members.