Bank of America and CrossBoundary Energy will explore financing solutions to expand the latter’s renewable energy portfolio across Africa, the commercial and industrial (C&I) solar developer announced at the COP27 conference this week.
CrossBoundary said that the blended finance transaction will support the delivery of its pipeline of 225MW of solar and wind capacity and 50MWh of battery energy storage systems to its corporate customers across the continent.
This announcement comes after CrossBoundary secured US$25 million in June from Bank of America alongside ARCH Emerging Markets Partners and the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund to power mini-grids across Africa.
Matt Tilleard, co-founder and managing partner of CrossBoundary Group, said: “We are very excited to be able to share this news alongside Bank of America during COP27, hosted on the African continent, given our common goal of bolstering sustainable development in emerging markets.”
The company is currently developing a US$230 million portfolio of projects for corporate clients across 14 African countries.
“Bank of America recognises the importance of developing renewable energy infrastructure in Africa, where energy is lacking on a consumer level and commercial operations are hampered by outages,” said Karen Fang, global head of sustainable finance at Bank of America.
“We look forward to working with CrossBoundary, which has a solid track record in renewable energy deployment in Africa and a robust development pipeline, and hope this example paves the way for more sustainable development in emerging markets.”
Recent solar announcements in Africa have been largely focused on South Africa – the World Bank said it will repurpose a South African coal plant this week and Norway’s Scatec revealed plans to expand its presence in the country.
In September CrossBoundary Energy entered into a partnership with Engie Energy Access to build US$60 million of mini-grids in Nigeria.
Bank of America has committed to deploying US$1.5 trillion in sustainable finance by 2030, and mobilised around US$250 billion in 2021 in alignment with the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals.