Norfund invests in Green Infrastructure to improve essential infrastructure services
Clean Energy
Financial Institutions
Green Infrastructure
Scalable Enterprises
waste recycled in developing countries
of world population will live in cities by 2030
Green Infrastructure is a new investment area for Norfund. Investing in Green Infrastructure contributes to sustainable growth of cities and towns, reduces adverse environmental impact and improves people’s standards of living.
Why Invest in Green Infrastructure?
The number of people living within cities is projected to rise to 5 billion people by 2030. Common urban challenges include congestion, insufficient basic services such as electricity and water & sanitation shortages of adequate housing, declining infrastructure and rising air pollution.
Today, 883 million people worldwide live in slums. Urbanization challenges can be overcome in ways that allow cities to continue to thrive and grow, while improving resource use and reducing pollution and poverty. This requires significant investments.
Over recent decades, there has been significant emphasis on investments in power generation to address the need for reliable electricity. However, to create sustainable, efficient and reliable power sectors requires significant and targeted investment in the electricity networks that transmit and distribute that power.
Our ambition is to establish valuable partnerships, and to make 6-10 investments in essential infrastructure services by 2022.
Tellef Thorleifsson, CEO Norfund
Norfund strategy:
Green Infrastructure’s aim is to improve essential infrastructure services in:
- Waste management, including waste-to-energy
- Water supply and sanitation, including waste-water treatment
The priority is direct investments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our focus so far has been to carefully assess and understand market dynamics and business models to pinpoint commercially sustainable business opportunities. As described above, investments in this sector will require strong technology and market knowledge to identify commercially viable projects early on.
Norfund prefers to invest in collaboration with experienced industry partners who are able to transfer best practices to investee companies. Local or regional smaller players will also be considered.
Our Ambitions
In our strategy 2023-2026, our defined ambitions are:
- 50 million m3 water and wastewater treatment capacity enabled
- 20,000 tons of waste treatment capacity enabled
Where We Invest
What We Offer
Norfund is an active minority investor. We offer risk capital through equity, loans and funds to companies that meet our requirements.
To maximise commercial and developmental success, Norfund strives to be a value adding owner beyond the capital investment. Norfund’s investment teams have extensive experience in project development and governance and work closely with partners to develop companies. Norfund takes a position as an active owner and requires a board seat in equity investments. With more than 20 years’ experience of investing in developing countries, Norfund continuously builds and develops the expertise needed to invest and manage risks in order to succeed as an investor.
Partnerships
Norfund invests with or via partners to benefit from their knowledge and expertise. We often prefer to partner with large, well-known and respected companies with a local presence and a long-term horizon, whose interests align with those of Norfund.
