Environmental Opportunities Facility

pending

The EOF will provide catalytic project development funding and flexible investment financing for innovative projects that address primarily local environmental issues. Target sectors include: (i) environmental infrastructure services (e.g., clean water supply and wastewater treatment), (ii) pollution abatement services (e.g., for outdoor and indoor air pollution), (iii) sustainable technologies and business models (e.g., renewable energy, low-impact agriculture, eco-tourism), and (iv) ‘eco-efficiency’ improvements that reduce material and energy inputs.Investments in these types of projects clearly contribute to IFC’s mission of supporting sustainable development. However, a number of promising projects do not yet meet IFC’s mainstream investment criteria because they involve higher-than-acceptable costs and/or risks. The ventures hold out the prospect for increased environmental sustainability but must overcome the uncertainty associated with new markets, new technologies and new ways of doing business.The EOF will allow IFC to support these more challenging ventures with grants for project preparation and/or flexible investment financing. EOF projects will be pursued in a manner that clearly acknowledges the higher risks and designs appropriate interventions. In this way, the EOF will give IFC the ability to ‘push the market’ towards adopting new business models and technologies that protect the environment and address problems of critical concern to people living in developing countries, especially the poor.