Maldives hosting Renewable Energy Investor Conference 2023

In a world where climate change has become an existential threat, the need for nations to adopt sustainable energy solutions has never been more pressing. The Maldives, as a small island nation located in the Indian Ocean, has recognized the urgency of transitioning towards cleaner energy sources to safeguard its pristine natural environment. 

With this, the Maldives’ move towards a more sustainable future, unfortunately, started as of late, and one of the biggest initiatives that the country is moving towards in terms of sustainability has been the move towards the usage of renewable energy in all sectors of the Maldives. And so the Government of the Maldives set an aim to achieve net zero by 2030 in order to create a safer and more sustainable, resilient and prosperous future for the coming generations of the country. 

With the net-zero target, the Maldives officially started making big moves towards reducing the number of greenhouse gases, and with this, the country started focusing more on how to implement the usage of renewable energy in the different sectors of the Maldives.

In an effort to make the net zero by 2030 a success for the future of the Maldives and its citizens, the Government of the Maldives started working alongside World Bank on projects such as the Scaling-up Renewable Energy Program (SERP) which aimed to promote clean energy infrastructure in the country under which the World Bank alongside the Government of the Maldives and the Climate Investment Fund started out the Accelerating Sustainable Private Investment in Renewable Energy (ASPIRE) project.

The ASPIRE project has been one of the biggest projects that is being carried out by the Environment Ministry of the Maldives alongside the World Bank in order to create a greener future for the country through the usage of renewable energy as thor project aims to deploy 20 MW of solar PV across Greater Male’ region. With the success of this project, both parties further came together to formulate yet another project heavily focused on a green initiative, the Accelerating Renewable Integration and Sustainable Energy (ARISE) project.

The ARISE project can easily be seen as a second phase to the ASPIRE project, being carried out in order to take the sustainable initiative to greater heights as this project aims to broaden the horizons by targeting to implement of 36 MW of solar PV, supplemented through the sufficient capacity of Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) to outer islands, instead of solely focusing on the Greater Male’ Area. 

The funding for the ARISE project heavily relied on private capital which was leveraged through International Development Association (IDA), Grant and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) guarantee(s) as well as BESS deployment and grid modernization through financing from both the Asian Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Clean Technology Fund (CTF).

With one of the projects having become a major success and the Maldives finally heading towards a more sustainable form of energy consumption with the usage of renewable energy, the Government of the Maldives along with the Environment Ministry of the Maldives and the World Bank are planning to host a Renewable Energy Investors conference which is set to take place on the 7th and 8th of June 2023. 

This conference is set to act as a platform to share the pipeline of projects on offer in order to obtain bidder and lender community’s insight and feedback in addition to bringing together investors with the aim of sharing experiences from similar projects which are facilitated with a partnership between the Government of the Maldives along with the World Bank. presenting to investors the pipeline of ongoing and upcoming opportunities in the Maldives when it comes to reusable energy as well as getting investors' insights and feedback for the structuring of bid design for the upcoming opportunities. 

With this conference set to take place in a hybrid format, participation is open for interested parties to join both in-person as well as virtually. The in-person conference is set to take place in Bandos Island Resort while the virtual participants are to be sent a link to join. Additionally, the Government of the Maldives will also be providing a great opportunity to interested parties by facilitating site visits to floating and ground-mounted solar PV locations in Addu City on 10th June 2023. 

Some of the interesting content that is going to be covered in this conference include the Government presenting their vision for such projects, delving into the energy sector of the Maldives and the progress it has made over the year, a look into the framework for the ASPIRE and ARISE projects that are carried out along with the World Bank, the upcoming opportunities and project pipelines, covering some financial topics relating to both projects along with risk coverage and the guarantee under both projects along with an overview of the Net Zero investment framework. 

In addition to this, the conference will also be covering the project structure for both the ASPIRE and ARISE projects along with discussion sessions hosted for the 10 and 16 MWp solar PV and floating Solar PV in the Maldives along with a panel discussion as well.