After a decade as team leader of the GET.invest Finance Catalyst, Paul van Aalst is handing over his position at the end of the year. We asked Paul to reflect on a decade of leading the Finance Catalyst.

What is the GET.invest Finance Catalyst?

The Finance Catalyst literally catalyzes investment. Project developers submit plans to us for renewable energy projects and companies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Then we provide tailored investment and financial advisory services and introduce these projects to investors that align with them. Often, this first investment is then followed by other investors: hence, the catalyzing effects of our work. GET.invest is currently co-funded by the European Union, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and the Austrian Development Agency.

How did the Finance Catalyst start? 

The GET.invest programme was set up in 2015 by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the German government-funded agency that is involved in developmental work across the globe. The team leader profile they were looking for matched my profile quite well, so I teamed up with fellow consultants at Partners for Innovation, and together we developed a proposal. We now implement the Finance Catalyst with 7 colleagues at Partners for Innovation and close to 30 advisors who are based mainly in African countries, with oversight from GIZ.

What is the biggest change you saw over the past decades?

When the Finance Catalyst started, I had already been active for two decades in financing clean energy. In my early days, around 1995, we were still really figuring out what clean energy even was and how it could be financed. A market for clean energy projects did not exist. By 2015, there was a small market, but I believe that in the past 10 years, this has taken a big leap forward. We played a role in this, but there were also other financiers, donors, institutions, regulators, entrepreneurs and technology providers that all played a role in this rapid development. We also saw how quickly solar panels dropped in price, making projects possible that weren’t possible before, and the introduction of hydrogen projects in recent years.

Is there a particular project you supported that you are still following?   

I remember vividly the story of Bio2Watt in South Africa. Twenty years ago, when I was still an investor, we invested in a young entrepreneur who wanted to quit his job in order to pursue his dream: setting up a biomass power plant. Later, he received advice via the Finance Catalyst and now he is the market leader in South Africa, running the largest biomass power station in the country – a multi-million dollar project. It is great to support such visionary investors and collaborate on a project that can make a lasting contribution.

Can you describe the impact of the Finance Catalyst?

Of course there are the numbers, if you look at the euros that were invested, kilowatts of installed power and jobs created. But way more important than these statistics are what lies behind that: if you engage in a clean cooking project, consider  all the women who don’t have to look for firewood anymore, and how much economic activity they could employ in the time they save. And the extended lifetime if you don’t inhale toxic smoke on a daily basis anymore. Or the economic benefits of reliable and affordable electrification so you can run machines and have lights at night. Those things are much harder to measure, but certainly a very important impact of what we have been doing over the past decade.

What I think is paramount, is that we were part of a wider movement of organisations working on the financing of renewable energy in Africa. This has helped to strengthen institutions and raise awareness about clean energy.  After all, the Finance Catalyst programme is contributing to the growth of African economies.

Results of the GET.invest Programme:

Number of project and companies brought to financial close: 120

Total expected investment volume (euro): 542 million

Greenhouse gas abatement potential: 2,7 million tCO2e per year

Energy access potential for people: 7,4 million 

Interview by: Arne Doornebal