As many governments begin to formulate their ambitious economy-wide and sectoral-based climate action and other low emission development strategies, the lack of resources, especially from the public sector has become evident. The LEDS GP members have thus identified a need for further support in mobilizing investment into LEDS and NDC actions. From a recent LEDS GP survey, members noted ‘access to finance’ and ‘support developing pilot projects on the ground’ as two key areas where they require additional assistance from the development community—if they are to achieve more ambitious climate, social, and economic recovery goals. Based on this input, the LEDS GP Innovation for Climate Action and Green Recovery Task Force has prioritized these topics as focal areas for enhanced collaboration with development finance, government, and other partners.

To address this need, the LEDS GP has designed the Regional Accelerator for Agriculture, Climate and Energy (RAACE). Under RAACE, regional embedded experts will play a facilitating and advisory role in assisting project developers and government officials—who participate in the LEDS regional, sector-focused communities of practice—in securing financing for priority projects and low-carbon investment. The LEDS GP will deliver this support in a manner that builds imbedded capacity across countries and achieves peer learning and replication of successful approaches. The LEDS GP will focus on investment facilitation for topic areas of common interest to countries defined by regional communities and with regional learning. For the Asia region, efforts will be centered around clean mobility.

Given RAACE’s focus on building regional capacity, the Asia LEDS Partnership will work with the select applicant in specific countries (2-3 countries that are members of the Clean Mobility CoP) in the Asia-Pacific region, in the manner described below.

Primary Roles for the Regional Expert

The select regional expert will work collaboratively with the ALP, Clean Mobility community of practice and the RAACE Secretariat team to:

• Help identify potential projects of ALP member countries under the topic of clean mobility that need fund mobilization support. These projects will serve as models for financing and for broad replication across countries, to be able to aggregate and pool projects. This could build off of some of the good experiences utilized by the Clean Energy Investment Accelerator1 which has applied project aggregation approaches.
• Screen potential projects for support. The regional expert, in consultation with ALP will help screen potential projects for RAACE support. This can include identifying whether projects align with national climate development priorities and have the potential to be financially viable in accordance with the mechanisms known and available in the region. Preference will be given for ambitious projects or those that could prove to be innovative models for replication regionally. The projects will be categorized according to different stages of development i.e.: a) Projects at the stage of conceptualization b) Potential projects that have a basic structure but have not proceeded further due to lack of technical inputs or may need reassessment. c) Potential projects approved by the national government for roll out but need support in submitting to relevant funding agencies.

The select regional expert will lead provision of:

• Technical support to public and private sector project proponents on prefeasibility advisory support, project design, preparation and financing, and risk mitigation mechanisms. Technical assistance will focus on those approaches that can open up the wider market for similar projects as well as opportunities for vertical policy alignment to address project development and finance barriers at the national and subnational levels. Financing solutions will need to be designed to address specific market hurdles for the country, market, and sectoral context. The regional expert will help develop a support plan for ambitious and innovative projects (or preferably project pools or companies) that may need multiple stages of financial and technical support.
• Matchmaking with existing project preparation and other financial support programs. The regional expert will help develop and maintain relationships with key regional project preparation facility and other project support programs. The expert will determine linkage areas and facilitate matchmaking between LEDS GP project proponents and these external support programs. Based on this, the regional expert will provide handholding support to the country to develop/finalize the proposed project and ensure submission of the project to relevant funding agencies.

Timeline

The project duration will be from the date of signing the contract in November 2021 until 31 March 2022. Based on further resource allocation and mutual consent, the project timeline and deliverables could be revised, but not guaranteed at this time.

Budget

28,000 Euro inclusive of tax.

Qualifications

The regional expert should have the following qualifications:

• 8-10 years experience in working in the area of climate or project finance along with an understanding of basic project development, financial structures and expertise conducting project feasibility assessments.
• At least 3 years of experience in working on projects related to clean mobility, largely in the Asia-Pacific.
• Experience working on enabling environments for mobilizing private sector investment, including relevant policies and regulations.
• Experts located within the Asia-Pacific region are preferred, but is not mandatory.
• Proficiency in English (spoken and written) is required.
• Knowledge of relevant regional project preparation facilities and finance support programs.
• Ability to convene country stakeholder groups to ensure project alignment.

Submission of Applications

Please submit your CV with a technical proposal (with a tentative work plan that fits the budget) which should include your expected remuneration (include details on per day cost). Kindly email your application to alpsecretariat@iclei.org and copy soumya.chaturvedula@iclei.org with the subject line: Application – Asia Regional Expert_RAACE

Full Terms of Reference

The full Terms of Reference can be accessed HERE.