The Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact are excited to announce the launch of the Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) Programme, promoting clean energy in sub-Saharan Africa to boost long-term job creation and reduce poverty through economic growth and women empowerment.

Backed by the IKEA Foundation with co-funding from UK Aid and delivered jointly by the Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact, PREO will provide support to locally-relevant energy projects and partnerships that use a market-led approach to expand productive use of energy (PUE) in rural areas through:

• grant funding to stimulate investment and income-generating activities;
• partnership building support to bring various actors together for specific projects and programmes;
• offering advisory services to companies involved in PUE, including market intelligence, partnering and financing advice.

PREO has launched today its first round of calls for proposals for Action Learning Projects and Innovative Supply-chain Based Partnerships that have the potential to stimulate productive electricity demand and improve employment and incomes in off-grid areas in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa).

Eligible projects will receive grants in the range of €100,000 and €300,000 and will be judged against a number of criteria including, their potential contribution to socio-economic development in the form of livelihoods opportunities, local employment, income and value creation, women economic empowerment, as well as replicability and scalability of the projects.

In addition to stimulating productive use of energy and economic activity, successful applicants are expected to undertake action research, gather and evaluate socio-economic impact data, and share learnings.

The window of opportunity for expression of interest is open for five weeks and runs until 30th July 2020.

Interested applicants are invited to visit www.preo.org to find out more and register their interest.