We must make significant new investments in clean energy to meet global climate and sustainability goals. Renewable energy investment is growing, but not quickly enough.

Faster, better project preparation is needed to drive investment at the speed and scale needed. Project preparation facilities (PPFs) – along with financial innovations, building local capacity and ensuring a strong enabling environment, among other interventions – can help accelerate investment in clean energy.

This paper provides a current mapping of the PPF landscape. The results cover 150 PPFs and form the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. The research finds that taken together, PPFs fall short of their potential positive impact, given the scale of the challenge. The authors recommend that donors, governments and the PPF community further develop the sector’s focus on:

• evaluating the effectiveness of PPFs, individually and collectively, to assess and chart progress towards closing the clean energy investment gap
• investing in communication and knowledge sharing to accelerate interventions that encapsulate the most effective PPF approaches
• improving understanding of the complementary initiatives that can help PPFs thrive.

Report by the Overseas Development Institute