Financial Innovation Driving Green-energy Innovation

Finding solutions for Africa’s transition to a more sustainable energy mix will require significant innovation in the area of green technology. But what is sometimes overlooked is that a transition to a renewables-based economy will also take major financial innovation.

Raising the capital required to fund renewable-energy projects, such as those approved under South Africa’s ambitious Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (IPPPP) will require new financial partnerships, and also an awareness of options available to power producers.

In this context, an exciting development has been the partnership between the JSE, Africa’s largest stock exchange, and Green Energy Africa Summit (GEAS) to be held in Cape Town later this year.

GEAS will bring together governments, national regulators and utility companies, independent power players, investors, financial institutions and service providers, driving deals and investment into new energy projects. The summit is aimed at helping to lay the foundation for wider, more sustainable energy access and solutions for the continent.

With the JSE as a major partner for the summit, emerging energy entrepreneurs will now be able to find advice and practical support around getting their projects funded, or how to structure financing that will ensure they can continue to raise funding as their projects evolve.

The JSE recently launched its JSE Private Placements subsidiary (JPP), a financial services provider geared to facilitating innovation and growth in the raising of private capital through both equity and debt.

JPP offers services to private entities looking to raise debt or equity through an automated and digitised platform that connects private companies and issuers directly to investors, enabling private capital formation transparently, efficiently, and accessibly.

Investors can access an array of potential deals that meet their investment criteria as well as track the history of previous placements and deals, providing much-needed visibility in this fast-growing segment of the market.

“With JPP, we are building a future-fit capital market that delivers a seamless digital marketplace that pairs up private debt and equity issuers with investors, including venture capital funders,” says JSE Group CEO Leila Fourie.

The GEAS-JSE partnership offers an opportunity for businesses to develop and structure projects that are truly bankable and more likely to succeed from the outset – many of them in South Africa.

“Driving investment into South Africa remains a critical and necessary imperative,” says JSE director of capital markets Valdene Reddy. “As the JSE, we continue to strengthen the positioning of SA investment appeal by providing unique capital-raising opportunities for both local and international investors on our exchange.”

The JPP platform provides a tangible solution for energy sector developers. In addition, it promises to transform energy security on the continent, providing financial solutions that can help drive energy independence.

Where energy businesses are able to build partnerships of their own with the JSE and its platforms, they are also likely to gain credibility as financially and socially compliant enterprises, which can in turn help to attract further partnerships.

“Hats off to the JSE for developing true solutions geared to the development of energy projects in Africa,” says Paul Sinclair, vice president, energy for GEAS. “All developers looking to raise capital are invited to attend GEAS, where they can meet with JSE staff and learn how they can benefit from platforms such as JPP.

“The JSE are emerging as a knight in shining armour for emerging project developers,” says Sinclair. “Their new private placements offering takes businesses through a process that helps them reach bankability, so they can actually raise capital.”

GEAS will bring together developers in the early stages of the green energy journey with potential investors looking to get in on the ground floor on real projects driving Africa’s energy transition.

The JSE partnership offers exciting opportunities for start-up energy entrepreneurs to learn the ins and outs of raising investment capital, as well as the compliance requirements for listing on domestic and international exchanges.