Request for Expression of Interest: Results Based Financing Accelerator (CCA)
Summary
The United Nations Foundation (UNF) 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 to allow the sector to thrive. Clean cooking transforms lives by improving health, protecting the climate and the environment, empowering women, and helping families save time and money.
CCA has been leading the development of a systems strategy for the clean cooking ecosystem, with the goal to drive greater collaboration, transparency, and ambition toward universal access to clean cooking by 2030. Results-based financing (RBF) has been identified as a priority area for CCA, and CCA is seeking a firm to support the delivery of the Results Based Financing Accelerator (RBFA) Initiative. The clean cooking ecosystem is actively exploring innovative financing mechanisms to increase the level and types of capital available to close the vast financing gap. RBF, including climate finance and carbon credits, represents the forefront of funding innovation and a largely untapped source of catalytic capital for clean cooking. RBF is sizable and growing, particularly as voluntary carbon markets and climate finance expand and donors prefer more innovative financing mechanisms that can attract commercially-oriented impact investors.
Through an extensive engagement process, stakeholders in the clean cooking ecosystem collectively identified several key foundational knowledge pieces and applied learning opportunities to address the holistic needs of the clean cooking ecosystem. In response, CCA is developing the RBFA as a strategic, multi-partner Initiative to accelerate the application of RBF for clean cooking by establishing a set of foundational public goods and products that do not currently exist. By driving innovation in the development and application of RBF mechanisms, the RBFA will reduce transaction costs and increase the credibility of the clean cooking ecosystem for a variety of outcome buyers to unlock transformational funding, ultimately making clean cooking solutions more affordable at scale. The RBFA will include the following activity areas:
- Fund, develop, and provide technical support for learning pilots and research that push the frontier of RBF design and application: e.g., prioritize innovations that can increase affordability for the poorest, most marginalized communities in the Global South
- Build the public infrastructure that supports the whole ecosystem in developing RBF mechanisms to reduce transaction costs and timelines for project implementers: e.g., deploy digital technologies to facilitate results verification and speed up catalytic capital deployment, streamline or develop clear methodologies with leading industry bodies
- Draw in more and more diverse outcome buyers through engagement campaigns: e.g., develop sector-specific evidence summaries across climate, nature-based solutions, health, gender, rural development, energy access, and private sector development
- Empower diverse enterprises to access RBF: e.g., provide pre- and post-investment technical assistance to grow the pool of enterprises and project developers registering with RBF schemes, aggregate vetted projects, develop an evergreen working capital facility to bridge the gap for smaller enterprises that cannot pre-finance projects
CCA is seeking a qualified consulting firm to help design and deliver on the RBFA. CCA seeks support on developing the following expected deliverables:
- Generate a landscape of outcome buyers that represent high potential for the clean cooking ecosystem, with a particular focus on developing a nuanced segmentation or typology within various categories of outcome buyers that can inform the design of an outcome buyer working group focused on clean cooking
- Develop recommendations for how clean cooking can adopt the rigor in methodologies and verification (including digital verification where most effective) to meet expectations and needs of high potential outcome buyers in the results-based finance space and well as quantifying how these recommendations can unlock a larger quantum of capital
- Categorize and improve the robustness of data capture and rigor for standardization related to the carbon market, including the need for and applications for digital technology
- Conduct analysis of where current outcome buyers purchase carbon credits and how to optimize for a premium price related to co-benefits generated by clean cooking
- Identify service offerings to enterprises that can be standardized to increase the number of enterprises able to access the benefits of RBF, including carbon credits
- Recommend learning projects and opportunities for RBF related to the clean cooking ecosystem
Request for Expression of Interest:
Please submit documentation related to demonstrated expertise related to RBF, subsidy design, carbon finance, climate finance, clean cooking, and/or energy access. Expertise/experience with RBF or related projects in sub-Saharan Africa will especially be taken into consideration. The total submission should be under 10 pages total and include:
- Firm description, including organizational experience as relevant
- CVs of qualified team members
- Description of work related to previous relevant projects
Submission Details
Please submit materials related to the Expression of Interest to strategy@cleancookingalliance.org with the subject line “Results Based Financing Accelerator Application.”
The deadline for submission is May 6, 2022.
