Careers

Senior Manager, Responsible Carbon Finance and Innovative Finance Practice, Clean Cooking Alliance

Position Overview

The Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) works with a global network of partners to build an inclusive industry that makes clean cooking accessible to the three billion people who live each day without it. Established in 2010, CCA is driving consumer demand, mobilizing investment to build a pipeline of scalable businesses, and fostering an enabling environment that allows the sector to thrive. Clean cooking transforms lives by improving health, protecting the climate and environment, empowering women, and helping consumers save time and money. In alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals, CCA is working to achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2030.

CCA seeks to make high-impact clean cooking solutions desirable, affordable, and accessible for consumers and viable for businesses to provide sustainably at scale. It supports companies that design, manufacture, distribute, and retail electric, biomass, ethanol, biogas, and LPG-based clean cooking solutions in addition to more efficient wood and charcoal cookstoves. It also supports technology innovation with the aim to commercialize new technologies such as highly energy-efficient electric cookers for off-grid/mini-grid communities.

CCA’s Clean Cooking Systems Strategy highlighted that at least US$10 billion per year is required to achieve universal access to clean cooking, yet the current level of funding lags far behind at about $130 million annually. In response, CCA has established the Catalytic Finance Accelerator. Its mission is to catalyse significant growth in funding and investment in the sector within three years. It will do so by addressing challenges that lie in the way of high-growth catalytic capital (most notably carbon finance and public funded results-based finance); by leveraging these pools of funding to catalyse larger pools of traditional capital (e.g., guarantees, debt, equity, early-stage equity); and by laying the groundwork to unlock future pools of capital (e.g., social value finance at scale).

The Catalytic Finance Accelerator is organized according to its role in the financing ecosystem:

• Instilling smarter policies, standards, and principles that govern the conduct of actors in clean cooking markets and their adjacent sectors, bridging information gaps and providing certainty and confidence to investors, outcome buyers, and funders.
• Building improved market information, tools, and infrastructure to improve decision-making, reduce transaction costs and increase productivity for investors, outcome buyers, and funders.
• Improving capacity of clean cooking solutions providers to meet the expectations of investors, outcome buyers, and funders for reliability, predictability, and scalability, and impact.
• Attracting and enabling new pools of capital from adjacent sector investors, traditional official development assistance providers and philanthropic funders.

The role of the Catalytic Finance Accelerator in CCA is to position the Clean Cooking Alliance as an influential voice and market facilitator for innovative finance in clean cooking markets.

Making carbon markets work for clean cooking is central to this role because carbon markets present significant opportunities to the growth of clean cooking markets by lowering cost curves to the consumer, accelerating the viability of clean cooking companies and business units, and making clean cooking companies more attractive to traditional investors. These markets also pose significant risks to the sustainable growth of competitive clean cooking markets. CCA’s approach to maximising opportunities and minimising risks on advancing 4 key characteristics of how carbon markets and clean cooking markets interact, including:

• Integrity to build market confidence through better policies, standards and methodologies,
• Fairness to enable transparent and equitable distribution of the proceeds of carbon revenue along the carbon value chain,
• Additionality and complementarity to enable carbon finance to complement and catalyse other forms of finance and optimize subsidies that enable the sustainable development of clean cooking markets
• Level playing field to enable many clean cooking companies to access carbon markets by lowering the costs of market entry and doing business, and by improving access to finance for project development.

The Catalytic Finance Accelerator is seeking a dynamic and versatile carbon finance professional to contribute to shaping the responsible carbon markets strategy, including tracking, maintaining, and communicating state of the art in debates and data on carbon markets and carbon finance for clean cooking, generating industry leading knowledge products, supporting targeted pursuit strategies to changes in policies and practices, and advising on the design of programmatic interventions.

The Responsible Carbon Finance Senior Manager, Innovative Finance Practice will play a core role in planning, developing, and implementing effective strategies to support the development of responsible carbon markets for clean cooking. They will bring deep carbon markets knowledge, extensive networks, and an entrepreneurial approach to prepare and position the Catalytic Finance Accelerator as a key source of knowledge and expertise in the clean cooking sector. They will be a member of Innovative Finance Practice within the Market Strengthening Team and will also work closely with several intervention work streams focused on maximising finance for clean cooking, serving as their carbon markets advisor and supporting them by developing and implementing robust and credible carbon-related aspects to the interventions. They may serve as a lead or project manager on in their area of expertise or be a key contributor to projects led by others.

The Senior Manager, Responsible Carbon Finance will also work closely with the Evidence and Impact team, as well as with the Global Networks and Partnership team on strategic cross-cutting initiatives and communications.

This position is based in the UK or remote Europe/Africa.

Essential Functions:

• Develop and implement the responsible carbon finance strategy that increase the impact of the Catalytic Finance Accelerator’s efforts to maximise the contribution of carbon finance for clean cooking markets
• Contribute to the overall positioning of CCA as a premier thought leader in carbon finance and as a leader in delivering actionable insights on carbon finance for funders, policy makers, private sector partners, and other development actors
• Manage projects that generate insights, analysis and tools that provide practical guidance on standards, methodologies, innovations, trends, and best practices in engaging voluntary carbon markets for the clean cooking ecosystem
• Write and edit communications products on carbon finance in the clean cooking sector, including op-eds, blogs, briefing notes, speeches, and other material as needed
• Work effectively across teams at CCA, reflecting carbon finance priorities in CCA strategies and adopting practical approaches to leverage carbon finance in CCA programming. This includes but not restricted to supporting the digital innovation challenge, securitizing carbon contracts to unlock bank finance, financial sector guidelines on carbon finance, integration of carbon finance in CCA’s digital data platform on clean cooking finance and investment, monetizing social value, and development of market baselining tools to lower the cost of market entry
• Collaborate with a variety of consultants and vendors for research and technical assistance to market participants
• Maintain and help initiate effective professional relationships with key external and/or internal stakeholders (e.g., CCA partners, the media, academia, think tanks, government agencies, etc.)
• Analyze, identify, and mitigate risk within the context of CCA’s external-facing communication.
• Help advise Catalytic Finance Accelerator intervention workstreams on trends, changing/unexpected circumstances that may impact our work; help to determine strategic responses
• Manage the development projects and concepts as needed for the Senior Director, Innovative Finance
• May provide technical coaching to staff members or guidance and support to junior staff; may oversee project-specific consultants and contractors
• Other duties as assigned

Selection Criteria

• Bachelor’s degree required; focus in economics, finance, environment or related discipline preferred
• 8 years of professional experience Ain a relevant discipline in carbon market activity or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Strong writing and analytical skills
• Energetic and positive attitude with a ‘growth mindset’
• Solutions-oriented and able to manage and advance multiple tasks and responsibilities in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
• Attention to detail and strong organizational skills.
• Problem-solver with a proactive, no-task-is-too-small nature, who takes initiative
• Team-oriented, supportive work style, and able to work independently
• Excellent communicator, able to synthesize and convey complex information clearly
• Excellent judgment and creative problem-solving skills, including negotiation and conflict resolution skills
• High ethical standards and ability to maintain confidentiality and discretion with sensitive information
• Ability to learn new systems and collaboration platforms efficiently
• Proficiency in Office Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint), with particular emphasis on ability to create compelling and professional PowerPoint materials
• Ability to work under pressure and handle stress
• Ability to meet regular attendance/tardiness policy
• Strong grasp of global trends in voluntary carbon markets, experience as a market analyst, helping carbon buyers or sellers develop their strategies, and/or or policy research
• Strong skills in data analytics preferred
• Collaborative attitude
• Excellent writing and editing skills for publications, blogs, online and multi-media
• Proven experience developing high quality analytical reports, conducting market research, developing carbon market strategies, and/or managing development of carbon projects through each stage of the registration, implementation and MRV processes
• Demonstrated ability to support technical teams to develop influential knowledge products (research papers, blogs, slide decks, podcasts, videos, etc), including the provision of technical guidance on relevance to carbon markets, carbon market principles, standards, and methodological requirements
• Demonstrated ability to initiate and maintain effective professional relationships with key external and/or internal stakeholders
• Demonstrated ability to function as a team player in a multicultural environment, and experience working with teams across different time zones and cultures
• Ability to bring together internal stakeholders toward a collective outcome
• Ability to seek guidance on complex projects/issues from more senior staff
• Capacity to work simultaneously on a variety of issues and tasks, adjusting to priorities and achieving results within agreed objectives and deadlines
• Demonstrated experience in global development and knowledge of key trends and related communication issues an advantage

Benefits& Compensation

For full-time, benefit eligible employees, UNF offers an excellent range of benefits, including:

• a choice between two health plans through UnitedHealthcare (PPO or HDHP with HSA)
• dental insurance
• vision insurance
• flexible spending accounts
• 403b retirement savings plan with a generous matching contribution
• group term and supplemental life insurance
• short-term disability
• long-term disability
• health club discounts
• commuter subsidy
• back-up care
• employee assistance program

Additionally, all benefit eligible employees have 12 paid holidays, 20 vacation days, 10 sick days, 3 personal days, and 8 weeks of family leave care.

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