PE Live: Transition projects need lower cost of capital

Better management of project risks needed to bring down cost of capital and speed up deployment of low-carbon technologies, panellists say

Finding ways to reduce the cost of capital for investment in low-carbon technologies, especially in poorer countries, will be crucial to the energy transition, according to panellists at a PE Live event entitled Is Bill Gates Right on Climate Change? “One of the challenges in poorer countries is that capital can be very expensive because the risk is very high, risk of default, risk of actually getting projects over the line, getting them done,” says Allan Baker, Head of Energy, EMEA, at Societe Generale. “We have seen some progress but what we really need to see are innovative ways of reducing the cost of capital. For example, governments or multinationals developing products to take some of