AfDB Leads Global Push to Unlock Climate Finance for Africa’s Power Grids and Energy Storage
At a high-level ministerial session during COP30 on 14 November 2025, the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) joined a coalition of leading multilateral banks, investors and industry bodies in formally endorsing a landmark set of six “Climate Finance Principles for Grids” aimed at dramatically scaling up funding for electricity transmission and storage infrastructure worldwide.
The principles, developed under the Green Grids Initiative (GGI), were co-endorsed by the Inter-American Development Bank, British International Investment, East African Development Bank, Climate Bonds Initiative, major investor groups, the Global Renewables Alliance, GridWorks, Utilities for Net Zero Alliance and the Government of the United Kingdom.
The commitment comes at a critical juncture: global electricity demand is surging while transmission and storage networks – the backbone of any clean-energy transition – remain chronically underfunded and overstretched, especially in emerging markets.
Daniel Schroth, AfDB Director for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, who represented the Bank on the panel, declared:
“There can be no energy transition without transmission. Sub-Saharan Africa alone needs an additional 150,000 km of transmission lines, while South Africa requires at least 1,500 km of new lines every year. Unlocking Africa’s vast renewable potential demands massive, urgent investment in modern grids and storage.”
Mr Schroth stressed that current investment flows fall far short of what is required to integrate rising volumes of variable renewables, accommodate electric vehicles, data centres, green hydrogen and industrial electrification, and build resilience against worsening climate impacts.
The newly endorsed principles are designed to:
– De-risk grid and storage projects for private investors
– Standardise climate-finance eligibility criteria
– Promote blended-finance instruments and regulatory reforms
– Accelerate bankable project pipelines across developing economies
Panelists highlighted the AfDB’s Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) as one of the continent’s most effective blended-finance vehicles and called for similar mechanisms to be replicated and scaled rapidly.
The COP30 announcement builds directly on the Global Grids and Storage Pledge launched at COP29 and sends a strong signal that multilateral development banks, governments and the private sector are now aligning to close the estimated $700 billion annual global transmission-and-storage investment gap – with Africa’s needs among the most acute.
The African Development Bank reaffirmed its readiness to anchor larger volumes of concessional and risk-mitigation capital to crowd-in commercial finance, stating that modernising the continent’s grid infrastructure is now the single biggest enabler for achieving universal energy access, industrial growth and a just clean-energy transition by 2050.
