Clean Energy

Increased supply and access to clean and reliable energy enables economic growth, job creation, improved living standards and mitigates climate change.

Strategic ambitions

Norfund has defined the following ambitions for the strategy period 2019-2022:

• 5,000 MW new capacity, of which 4000 MW is renewable
• 1.5 million households provided with access to electricity

Accumulated achievements 2019 – 2020

Investments and Results in 2020

Clean Energy (CE) is the largest component of Norfund’s portfolio and accounts for 45 per cent of Norfund’s portfolio. The equity share of the total clean energy portfolio is 85 per cent.

Investing in a variety of energy solutions

The majority of our investments in this investment area are in utility-scale, grid-connected power plants. However, technologies in this sector are changing, costs are declining and new opportunities are emerging.

Despite the challenges presented by COVID-19, we succeeded in making several investments in 2020 in captive power (i.e. supplying power directly to commercial and industrial customers), as well as in distributed generation and innovative energy solutions.

Norfund distinguishes between 'clean energy', which covers the whole energy portfolio, and 'renewable energy', which only covers energy based on renewable sources. The difference is accounted for by investments in gas-fired power plants in East and West Africa, through Globeleq.

All new investments in 2020 were in renewable energy.

Investments per Region

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Effects of COVID-19

In several markets, power demand dropped dramatically during the first half of 2020, in some cases resulting in surplus power and/or low prices. Precautionary ‘emergency’ measures had to be taken at power plants to ensure continuity in operations and stable power supply to the grid. By the end of the year, demand had recovered to pre-COVID levels in most markets, but it has set back plans for further capacity expansions in some countries. 

Most of the year, access to expert personnel for maintenance and repairs, as well as construction, was restricted and several projects under construction have seen delays. This resulted in delays and risks to ongoing plant operations. In the off-grid segment, we saw supply chain bottlenecks, particularly in the second quarter of the year, meaning that many companies ran low on stock and had to curtail sales.