Opportunity - Request for Proposals: Unit Economics Framework and Analysis for the Clean Cooking Sector
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- Cooking
- Improved Cookstoves
- Ghana
The United Nations Foundation’s Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) is accepting proposals from firms interested in undertaking critical research on the unit economics for a select group of stoves, fuels, and business models in the clean cooking sector. This work will be foundational for CCA’s Results-Based Financing Accelerator (RBFA), which seeks to enable Results-Based Financing (RBF) to drive greater impact in the clean cooking ecosystem.
Background of Assignment
CCA led the development of a systems strategy for the clean cooking ecosystem, with the goal to drive greater collaboration, transparency, and ambition toward universal access to clean cooking by 2030. RBF, particularly through the growth of climate finance and carbon credits, was identified as one of the most promising opportunities of the upcoming decade. While exciting progress has been made to advance RBF for clean cooking in recent years, the value of clean cooking must be better articulated, transaction costs reduced, and participating actors supported for the sector to capitalize on this tremendous opportunity.
As part of the Clean Cooking Systems Strategy, the Clean Cooking Alliance and its partners are launching a Clean Cooking RBFA, which will fund pilots and research to enable this radical acceleration, in addition to serving connection and communications functions.
The vision of RBFA is an effective global industry platform to galvanize support for results-based finance in clean cooking. It is expected to deliver this vision through 4 work-streams to solve problems that constrain the application of RBFs in the clean cooking space:
RBF Policy platform to enable coordination of common policies, standards, and measurement methodologies to reduce uncertainty and transactions costs. RBF expertise deployment network to support outcome buyers, implementers, and sellers with certified capacity to design, deploy and participate in RBF programs RBF Innovation Lab to enable rapid learning in data-poor environments through testing market assumptions, supporting application of RBF in challenging market segments Responsive knowledge curation facility to support current and potential RBF actors with rapidly curated information The RBFA is expected to focus horizontal workstream activities in areas that have the greatest prospect for innovation and additional funding for clean cooking. Key initial verticals include:
Voluntary carbon markets Conditional cash transfers Impact investments and financial markets Digital technology and economy The impact logic of RBFA is that demand and supply side subsidies will adjust unit economics of clean cooking in identified markets sufficiently to enable existing providers to reach operational viability and commercial sustainability quicker, encouraging entry of new suppliers. This improves the overall attractiveness of clean cooking markets for commercial investors and financial markets, enabling commercial capital to flow into clean cooking markets, while also incentivizing companies operating in others markets to also enter the clean cooking market with ancillary services (e.g. data analytics, sensors etc.). These collectively will hasten the evolution of clean cooking markets where markets will increasingly tend towards structures with a critical mass of providers offering high quality cooking solutions at a fair price which increasing numbers of people and businesses are willing and able to use.
CCA is now seeking a firm to assist in determining the prototypical unit economics for a range of stoves, fuels, and business models in the clean cooking sector. This work is essential for RBF program developers as they determine demand and supply side subsidy levels while also identifying additional opportunities to reduce costs to consumers. This work will build upon the pioneering recent work by MECS, EnDev, ESMAP, and other partners to advance stakeholder’s understanding of how best to use RBF for clean cooking.
Objective and further details here: https://cleancooking.org/funding-opps/request-for-proposals-unit-economics-framework-and-analysis-for-the-clean-cooking-sector/
