Flexenclosure Gets $24 Million to Reduce Poverty, Emissions in Developing Countries

Along with other investors, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) is putting $24 million into Flexenclosure as a way to reduce poverty while also cutting emissions in developing countries.

The Sweden-based company makes modular, prefab data centers and their power infrastructure for areas where construction is difficult. The data centers allow telecommunications companies to expand in emerging markets, giving people in rural areas of Asia and Africa access to reliable communications through cell phones.

Its modular eCentre houses telecom equipment and data, optimized for energy efficiency and  low cost of ownership.

Flexenclosure’s eSite is an on-site power system that supports wireless towers with a combination of solar, wind and batteries. It displaces diesel as backup power that takes over when the grid is unreliable or unavailable. It can also provide power for mobile phones, water pumps and schools. Software manages its use for multiple applications.

"An estimated 800,000 cellular base stations in emerging markets rely on diesel generators for their power supply," says Andrew Bartley, Chief Investment Officer for Telecoms, Media, and Technology for IFC. "This is a great potential market for Flexenclosure’s innovative product offering. Its growth
strategy is directly aligned with IFC’s goal to improve access to mobile-phone systems for people in rural areas in emerging markets while also reducing global greenhouse gas emissions."

World Bank Releases Report

IFC is the private equity arm of the World Bank, which recently released a report on the subject, The Sustainable Energy for All Global Tracking Framework report, in partnership with 13 other agencies.

It monitors progress towards the three objectives of the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All initiative: to mobilize a global coalition of governments, private sector and civil society to achieve, by 2030, universal access to modern energy, while doubling energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The reports finds only "modest" progress has been made on each of these since 1990. As of 2010, renewable energy accounted for 18% of the global energy mix and the energy efficiency, defined as compound annual growth of energy intensity is -1.3%.

To meet the three objectives, at least $600 billion a year needs to be spent until 2030, more than double the current $409 billion. That’s $45 billion more for electricity expansion, $4.4 billion for  modern cooking, $394 billion in energy efficiency, and $174 billion on renewable energy.

"Demand continues to outpace supply of electricity: that electricity needs to be affordable, and generated more and more in a sustainable way, and used more efficiently," says Rachel Kyte, vice president of the World Bank. "To rise to this challenge – to meet peoples’ basic needs and to do so sustainably clearly requires a scale of effort we have never seen before."

So Why Does the World Bank Still Support Fossil Fuels?

Meanwhile, the World Bank still supports massive fossil fuel and destructive hydro projects.

In April, 55 groups from 20 countries, ranging from environmental to human rights, sent a letter to World Bank President Jim Kim urging the end of this support.

And 22 leading off-grid clean energy entrepreneurs asked the Bank to support their businesses with $500 million in financing.

"If President Kim is serious about taking the World Bank in a new direction on climate change and real clean energy access, he needs to put the Bank’s money where his mouth is," says Sunita Dubey of Vasudha Foundation in India. "The World Bank’s current support for fossil fuel projects does little to promote energy access while doing a lot to exacerbate climate change. That needs to be flipped on its head."

As Dr. Kim has spoken out repeatedly about the dire consequences of climate change for people in developing countries, the bank has funded over $18 billion in fossil fuel projects over the last 5 years – nearly half its energy lending.

For example, it is among the major financers of the world’s largest hydroelectric plant moving forward in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a 40 gigawatt complex, almost twice the size of China’s Three Gorges dam. It would eventually supply power to half of Africa.

The Bank is doing more on clean energy, supporting projects like the world’s biggest concentrating solar plant in Morocco.

"If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planet," Kim recently said. "It is the poor, those least responsible for climate change and least able to afford adaptation, who would suffer the most."