3 March 2010: On the sidelines of the Africa Carbon Forum, taking place in Nairobi, Kenya, from 3-5 March 2010, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Standard Bank and the German Government’s International Climate Initiative have partnered to launch the Africa Carbon Asset Development (ACAD) Facility.
The ACAD Facility aims to support African carbon projects through a combination of technical assistance, grants and preferential access to corporate finance and transactional guidance. Taking a new approach towards capacity and market development, the ACAD Facility will share costs and risks with African banks such as Standard Bank to realize and replicate projects.
According to UNEP, the ACAD partnership couples UNEP’s longstanding capacity building expertise in environmental policy and finance with the financial know-how and regional reach of Standard Bank. For its launch, the ACAD Facility awarded its first grants to innovative “green” development projects including: providing partial payment for validation costs under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project in Kenya; and supporting the costs of engineering and carbon auditing studies required to earn carbon credits for the Lagos Waste Management Authority in Nigeria, which is developing several waste-to-energy sites. [UNEP Press Release]