Swedfund Commits $12m in SET Fund To Boost Renewable Energy Projects in Africa

Swedfund, the Swedish development finance institution, has committed $12m to SunFunder’s Solar Energy Transformation (SET) Fund.

The investment will contribute to increased access to electricity and the increased generation of renewable energy in emerging markets.

This takes SET Fund commitments to $60m, with Swedfund joining anchor investors DFC, Calvert Impact Capital, Ceniarth, and IKEA Foundation, among others. The fund’s junior layer has been filled, but there remains $10m available to senior investors.

“We are delighted to start this partnership with Swedfund and expand our work with development finance institutions. To solve energy access and climate change we need to match institutional investments at scale with clean energy projects around the world – which is what our blended funds achieve,” said SunFunder CEO Ryan Levinson. “We are particularly pleased to have now closed all the junior capital in the SET Fund.”

The $70m SET Fund, SunFunder’s third debt fund, is a 9-year blended finance vehicle for distributed solar and storage investments in African and other emerging economies.

SunFunder has now unlocked over $150m in debt financing and made loans to more than 50 off-grid solar companies, impacting over 7 million people with improved access to energy and mitigating over 700,000 tons of CO2 equivalent emissions annually.

The SET commitment is in line with Swedfund’s energy and climate goals of investing in the off-grid sector for solar energy, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than half of the total population lacks access to electricity.

“This investment gives us, as a development finance institution, the possibility to contribute to climate change mitigation and improved standards of living due to access to affordable and reliable electricity.

“It’s also important for us to provide capital to a fund with an outspoken strategy to invest their way through the COVID-19 pandemic at a point in time where the general interest for investments in developing countries is expected to decrease,” said Swedfund’s CEO Maria Håkansson.

Swedfund will also contribute by improving the environmental, social, and governance processes of the fund in relation to its borrowers.