As part of IRENA's objective to sustain and facilitate the spread of renewable energy technologies, IRENA has implemented a virtual market place for renewable energy projects.

The Sustainable Energy Marketplace is a platform free of charge, for project owners, governments, financiers, and service and technology providers to help develop and drive investments to new renewable energy projects. The marketplace will have region specific platforms including African, Asian, Latin American, and Caribbean platforms. The platform will be initially built for each region separately, but later it will expand to become a global market place.

The objective of the virtual market place is to accelerate the scale up of investments – both public and private – to promote initiation, development and financing of low-carbon renewable energy projects by bringing together project owners, governments, financiers, and service and technology providers. It makes investment opportunities visible and easily identifiable for investors, and helps project developers to identify relevant funding sources and expertise.

Understanding the market and capabilities of project owners creates a more transparent and structured framework for entities to operate, increases the project success rate, and improves sustainable development and access to energy in the region through the deployment of renewable energy.

The virtual market place will bring together project owners, governments, financiers, and service/technology providers to:

• enhance understanding of the market and capabilities of project owners;
• create a transparent and structured framework;
• increase project success rates;
• increase sustainable development and energy access in the region.

How does it work?

Market stakeholders – project owners, financiers and service/technology providers – can register by submitting the required information on themselves and:

• search efficiently for information of interest, for example searching for projects according to specific investment criteria of an investor, and financing sources or advisors according to specific needs of a project;
• easily find more information about the most relevant entities, projects or financing instruments, and contact them;
• create a virtual data room to organize and share confidential information with selected financiers, advisors, etc.;
• communicate directly with IRENA on specific needs and interests;
• access project development tools and data on markets, regulations and incentives.

IRENA will assess the most promising projects in more detail and cooperate closely with international financing institutions, donors, private sector advisors and service providers to actively facilitate the market. This will include:

• Project assessments to evaluate the topical needs of a project
• Active facilitation of project development, and matching with financing and expertise according to identified needs
• Tools for project development and data on markets, regulations and incentives including:
• Project Navigator
• REsource

Project owners will be able to access various financial instruments provided by multiple investors from development finance institutions, private companies, utilities, private equity funds, donor and multi-donor facilities, commercial banks and more. Furthermore, through the marketplace they will have access to different services (legal and financial advisory, environmental, project development, EPC contracting, etc.) and technologies.