and negotiate a co-financing package which, although 25 percent smaller, was still sufficient to proceed with the project, with the prospect of achieving similar greenhouse gas reductions as originally planned. In 2021, the Kazakhstan country office also took steps to create a guarantee facility for renewable energy investments, responding to the reluctance of banks to accept renewable energy assets as collateral. The lack of follow-on tools for DREI also limits the ability of UNDP to strategically deploy its own downstream investments. As described in chapters 4.2 and 4.3, the organization routinely deploys demonstration projects in its energy initiatives. Although these allow UNDP to introduce innovations and directly provide access, they also absorb capacity and funds, which may be more effective in progressing an energy sector if spent on longer-term policy and financial de-risking activities. By shifting its focus towards more consistent work on the enabling environment , it is conceivable that the first pilot projects could be implemented by other stakeholders (investors, financiers, communities) and not UNDP. The demonstration effect may be stronger as it would indicate that national political, regulatory or financial conditions had supported the installation of the clean energy technology, rather than a donor-driven initiative. This potential is greater where public and private entities have the requisite capacities to absorb a level of risk and implement a pilot; UNDP-led demonstrations are still likely to be required in contexts where the market is at a very early stage of development.
4.6 MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCES This section covers the major components of the UNDP organizational framework for the energy portfolio and the role of external funding in shaping the UNDP response to SDG 7. Finding 16. Funding. The UNDP energy portfolio has been steadily decreasing in funding volume since 2018, and it has received the smallest contribution from regular (core) resources of the signature solutions. Combined with its geographic spread, this downward trend reduces the ability of UNDP to commit energy expertise and hardware for a sufficient time to make a sustained contribution to national energy challenges. Since the start of the signature solution, total budget amounts for energy have been reduced by 30 percent, from just under $126 million in 2018 to just under $88.5 million in 2020, matched by a commensurate drop in expenditure.123
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Average expenditure rate was 78% over the period. The Bureau for Policy and Programme Support has grown over the period.
Chapter 4. FINDINGS
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