Cleaning cooking enterprises must brace for carbon finance — Expert
PLAYERS in the clean cooking sector have been advised to prepare themselves to harness the opportunities in carbon financial markets.
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The carbon financial market is a platform where companies trade carbon credits to regulate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Innohub, a business consulting firm, Nelson Amo, said: “There is quite some money moving around globally in the carbon finance sector where you have various entities who develop projects and based on that they can access funding from carbon credits.
Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of Ghanaian entities able to plug into the carbon finance and carbon finance credits markets.”
Mr Amo made the call in an interview with the media at a networking event organised in partnership with Clean Cooking Alliance to climax the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) Venture Accelerator Bootcamp in Peduase.
It focused on widening the opportunities for small and growing clean cooking companies to participate in the carbon market and attract carbon finance.
Through tailored technical assistance and capacity-building support, the CCA Venture Accelerator aims to enhance carbon-related technical and operational capacity in clean cooking enterprises and project developers, increase mobilisation of carbon finance for clean cooking enterprises – by reducing risks for pre-financiers and carbon buyers, and support ecosystem efforts geared towards building Africa.
Mr Amo said by establishing a robust structure and support mechanisms, green businesses would strategically position themselves to secure funding from the carbon finance market.
“As an entrepreneur with an interest in the clean energy or renewable energy sector, it is important to start looking at how you can access finance from the carbon markets.
It is difficult; but if you have the right structures and get the right support mechanisms, you will be able to get to that stage where you can have some extra funding from the carbon markets to subsidise operations,” he said.
The Director of Country Transition at CCA, Lindsay Umalla, said adopting other clean cooking alternatives was crucial in reducing the adverse impact of climate change by 2030.
She explained that her outfit was addressing the challenge of affordability for clean cooking projects by assisting industry players to seek carbon finance.
“Cooking is a huge emitter of greenhouse gases so being able to tackle clean cooking as a climate solution is absolutely imperative and a huge opportunity when you are looking at the climate-energy nexus,” she said.
Strengthening local manufacturers
For his part, the CEO of Sustainable Energy Technologies Limited, Lovans Owusu-Takyi, said: “The clean cooking market is developing.
One key thing to do is to help the local factories who are in the clean cooking sector to improve the technology to meet the regulatory standards and develop their businesses to become investment ready.”