Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

PFAN accepts applications from projects and businesses in low- and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central, South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Eastern Europe, Central America and the Caribbean Islands. Click here for a full list of eligible countries.

To be eligible for PFAN support, your project or business must:

  • provide climate change adaptation benefits and/or
  • offer or use clean energy technologies, products or services that fall within our areas of work.

PFAN is technology neutral, which means we do not prefer any technology over any other. Please click here for a list of eligible sectors and technologies.

Proposals should demonstrate that the project is commercially and technically viable and requires no or only minimal grant funding. If your project currently receives grant funding or has done so in the past, that does not affect eligibility.

For more information about the selection and scoring criteria used by PFAN, please click here.

Investment amount

The investment amount, or investment ask, should lie between US$1 million and US$50 million. This may be disbursed in smaller tranches as requested.

ONLY for energy access and rural electrification projects (clean cook stoves, solar home systems, mini grids) an exception is made, and the investment ask can lie between US$500,000 and US$50 million. This too may be disbursed in smaller tranches as requested.

Examples of eligible projects

  • Projects and businesses which deploy clean and renewable energy and/or climate change technologies for productive uses;
  • Greenfield and brownfield utility projects, independent power producer and distributed generation projects (for both thermal and electrical energy);
  • Existing projects which are operating at small or pilot scale and which are ready for scale-up;
  • Projects which increase access to energy for remote communities, including rural electrification, off-grid and mini-grid projects, thermal energy and clean cooking solutions;
  • New or expanding business ventures in clean energy and related technologies, including downstream projects (focused on deployment of existing technologies) and upstream projects (focused on development and commercialisation of a new clean technology);
  • Mergers, acquisitions or joint ventures, which will add value to an existing clean energy / technology business.

Exclusion criteria

PFAN will not be able to support projects in the following sectors, notwithstanding their climate benefits:​

  • Nuclear origin ​
  • Carbon capture and storage​
  • Combustion of fossil fuels​
  • Waste incineration ​
  • Gas venting and flaring​

Furthermore, PFAN will not support projects that​:

  • Are likely to infringe on the protection of critical habitats​
  • Use banned pesticides and/or chemicals​
  • Cause involuntary resettlement or physical economic displacement ​
  • Are likely to alter, damage, or remove any cultural heritage and/or sites​
  • Use forced, trafficked, or child labour​

 

Please also note that PFAN does not accept grant requests as PFAN does not give out grants or other direct forms of financial support.