The establishment of the National Green Energy Fund marks a milestone in Vanuatu’s energy sector development. With the Fund aiming to pool both domestic and international financial resources, the government not only hopes to improve electricity access in rural areas of Vanuatu, but also to contribute to achieving CO2 emission reduction NDC objective by using close to 100% renewable energy (RE) electricity generation by 2030. NGEF will also support energy efficiency projects, which will contribute towards achieving Vanuatu’s national sustainable energy targets elaborated in the National Energy Road Map (NERM) 2016-2030 and in the NERM Implementation Plan (2019) and NDC Roadmap (2019). This project is implemented in partnership with Department of Energy and Ministry of Climate Change in close collaboration with other Ministries, Departments, civil society and private sector representatives that form the NGEF Management Board. 

This project objective is to improve electricity access in rural off-grid areas of Vanuatu through sustainable energy sources and practices, and to promote green growth through sustainable energy uses. This project is aligned with IO2. Increased green growth investment flows which enable partner governments to implement green growth policies. 

The two main challenges addressed under this project are i.) Improve access to finance: Highlighted by the government as the main hinderance to development of energy sector, with NGEF now established, domestic and international funding streams towards energy sector should could now be pooled and strategically aligned to fund priority development needs of the sector. Consequently, more energy projects are expected to be implemented in coming years ii.) Improve access to electricity in rural areas through renewable energy (RE): NGEF projects will focus largely on rural off-grid areas, complementing ongoing government projects which aim to achieve 100% electricity access in rural off-grid areas by 2030 through RE sources. 

GGGI provides technical support to Department of Energy and NGEF staff, by development of project concepts for funding requests and assisting to identify potential sources of funding and partnerships for the NGEF. GGGI is also presented at NGEF Board meetings to provide advisory support. 

Impact: Supply and access to renewable energy in rural areas is increased reducing the energy sector’s green–house gas emissions. The project will contribute to SO1 on emission reductions and SO3.1 on energy access. 

Outcome: N/A – outcomes will be completed in 2020 

Project Outputs completed in 2019:

i. Green Growth Policies:

ii. Green Investments:

• Green investments catalyzed: USD 868k grant approved and disbursed by the Cabinet Budget Sub-committee and the parliament as part of the USD 4.3M funding request. The 4.3M USD funding request has been provisionally approved, with the funds being confirmed and released on a yearly basis  

iii. Capacity Building and Knowledge Products:  

• 1 capacity building activity in the form of on the job training where GGGI in country team provided Technical support to NGEF Manager in terms of strategy, project pipeline and proposal development and policy support on preparing Council of Ministers papers. 

Project Manager: Christopher Simelum 

Katerina Syngellakis, Lasse Ringius, Paul Kaun, Rosi Banuve, Yunae Nam