The Blended Finance team oversees the deployment of IDB Invest concessional funds towards highly additional and catalytic projects, where actual or perceived risks are too high for commercial finance alone. The team includes seven professionals with transversal responsibility in funds management and projects’ origination, structuring and execution: Ana Carolina Aquino, Joan Miquel Carrillo, Pilar Carvajo, Stephanie Eder, Eduardo Gutiérrez, Elee Muslin, Matthieu Pegon and Mengxue Tang (previous team members that contributed to past posts: Laura Giraldo).
Women face hurdles to access jobs in the high-growing renewable energy industry. More than 80% new jobs created by the decarbonization agenda will be in male-dominated sectors. Blended finance solutions are an important tool to incentivize sponsors to take proactive steps to dismantle these barriers to gender equality.
Donor funds can be combined with equity investments to create incentives and nudges for corporate management teams, to achieve a particular outcome that is good for society or the planet, and hopefully both.
Blended finance in equity investments can not only offer preferred returns to commercial investors, making deals in developing markets more attractive for them, but also bring to the decision-making table corporate climate action as a priority for companies of all sizes.
Development finance organizations, by themselves, lack the necessary capital to attend the needs of developing countries. Blended finance may be used to help institutional investors mobilize their capital securely and effectively in such countries.
Regenerative agriculture aims to catalyze ecological restoration, going beyond sustainable. It comprises holistic management that fosters soil regeneration, increased productivity and biological diversity, animal welfare, as well as farm and community economics. Blended finance resources and advisory services are key to catalyze innovative regenerative business models.
The tech revolution in solar energy, driving a significant drop in costs, is the best solution to the problem of connecting isolated communities to the power grid. These models, however, also provide a vision of a possible future with decentralized networks or even customers who not only consume energy but also produce and send it into the grid.