Financing a bankable and just energy transition

**Pamela Largue** (0:12)
What will it take to finance an energy transition that leaves no one behind?
I asked this question to Woochong Um, CEO of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, to understand the challenges hindering existing capital reaching the communities that need it most. Drawing on decades of experience in international development finance, Woochong explains why the challenge isn't simply a lack of money, but a lack of bankable projects, supportive policy and investor confidence. He provides real world examples from grid scale battery storage in India and Malawi to innovative community energy projects in Indonesia, demonstrating the power of partnerships in unlocking investment while creating lasting economic opportunity. It's an optimistic take on de-risking investment, building stronger energy systems and demonstrates why a successful energy transition depends on putting people and planet at the heart of economic prosperity. I'm Pamela Largue and this is the Energy Transitions Podcast.
Woochong, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about what is a really important topic, increasingly so. And that is financing the energy transition. But I think before we get into talking about the specifics, tell us a little bit more about the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet and your mission as CEO.

**Woochong Um** (1:42)
Yes, thank you very much. It's so nice to be here with you. It's a wonderful opportunity.
The Global Energy Alliance was set up about five years ago. It's going to be approaching five years, fifth year birthday in November. We were launched in Glasgow in 2021 as we were just starting to revive the convenings, I guess, in the tail end of the COVID-19.
So other than establishing this organization, the significance of coming out of COVID was, it's in vivid memory. This was organized because the development world is progressing quite well, but still there's something missing in terms of reaching the last mile of energy transition. And as you know, the energy is a foundation for all of the economic development. There are examples in different parts of the world. In my home country in South Korea, energy was a foundation when the economic development started in the 50s and 60s, and without it, today we will not have Samsung, Hyundai, or even BTS, right? So it doesn't matter to make that progress. So energy is a foundation for economic development, and things have been quite well within the existing development partners. But the issue is that why the number of people do not have electricity stayed at 700 million people for the last 10 years. 20 years prior to that, progress has been quite phenomenal, and I think largely due to the excellent work done by my former organization, the Asian Development Bank and World Bank and others, who are massively deploying capital resources to electrify people. But still, when you got to 700 million people, we got stuck. So this organization was set up with the initial support from the three key philanthropic organizations, Rockefeller Foundation, IKEA Foundation, and Basel's Earth Fund. To do exactly that, figure out why is it not happening beyond the threshold of the reduction of number of people without electricity to below 700 million people. What we do is we look to see who are the development partners that are active, what's going well, and then we actually let people do what they do. But if they're unable to do something, for example, channeling finance to the areas where there's no electricity and somehow it's not getting there, figure out what's the problem and try to bring in the unlikely partners across the public and private and now philanthropic partners to be able to tackle this problem together.
So that's the gist of what we try to do, and I don't know whether you know my background. I came from the Asian Development Bank. I've been working there for 31 years and prior to that, I was with the private sector in the US., Pfizer, everybody knows Pfizer now because of COVID. And then I decided to move on from the ADB, partly to see what else can I do to make a difference in this world, and especially in the energy transition.

**Pamela Largue** (4:52)
That is why it was so important for me to actually talk to you about financing the transition because your experience really lends itself to helping us understand where the challenges lie and how do you actually unlock financing.
And that's a great segue into my next question because I want to know, do you believe that financing is actually the biggest bottleneck in terms of driving the energy transition forward? Or is it a case of technology or infrastructure or political will? What are your thoughts?

**Woochong Um** (5:28)