SDG 7+13 – Increase the share of renewable energy and contribute to climate change mitigation.

Expected impact: Avoid 10.6k tCO2e/year.

SDG 8.5 – Sustain productive employment.

Expected impact: Five commercial and industrial firms will be connected and shall benefit from a 10% saving in electricity costs. The largest benefit will be felt by businesses that are highly dependent on electricity/suffer from reliability issues.

Challenge: Grid is >60% thermal. C&I solar sector is still relatively nascent.

Channel: Demonstrate the viability of the sector as a growth business segment for local investors.

Outcome: Further growth of the C&I solar sector contributing to more diversified energy mix and improved resilience of the sector.

Mobilised $7.59m of domestic private sector investment.

$83k to co-finance a technical capacity building programme for female engineers.

Resilience: Existing projects within Sham’s portfolio have coped well with extreme weather events experienced in the last year. The company also has insurance which covers weather related damage.

PIDG TA funding allowed Shams to scale up its female engineering training programme under the initial transaction, supporting women to develop specialist skills as solar technicians. Additional cohorts are set to be trained under this transaction. However, gender commitments under Phase 2 will be confirmed in 2024 following an assessment of the trainees’ progress.

As part of the due diligence process, 6 HSES improvements and 1 HSES enhancement were identified which are now reflected in the Project Environmental and Social Action Plan (ESAP). The enhancement was to support PIDG pilot the PIDG HSES solar supply chain risk assessment tool.