14 December 2009: The development banks’ Climate Investment Funds (CIF) have launched a new programme called “Scaling up Renewable Energy in Low Income Countries (SREP),” with pledges of US$210.7 million. The Clean Technology Fund (CTF) also approved financing of US$750 million on 2 December 2009 to accelerate global deployment of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). It will do so by investing in the CSP programmes of five countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia.

SREP is a targeted programme that aims to demonstrate in a small number of low income countries how to initiate energy sector transformation by helping them take renewable energy solutions to a national programmatic level.
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The CTF projects on deploying CSP at a commercial-scale over a 3-5 year timeframe is expected to avoid about 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide per year from the energy sectors of the countries. The transformational objective of this investment plan is served by accelerating cost reduction for a technology that could become least-cost globally, and then be replicated in other countries with high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) are implemented jointly by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank.[CIF Press Release]