Initiative kick-starts the top six opportunities for providing new finance for clean energy

Opportunities championed by Bank of America, the European Investment Bank and the Rocky Mountain Institute are among those selected as Finance for Resilience (or ‘FiRe’) Priorities for 2014 by participants at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in New York this week.

All of the winning ideas (known as “interventions”) are actionable and have the potential to reach a scale of $1bn-a-year in additional finance within three years. Investment areas targeted by the six selected interventions include green bonds, energy efficiency and emerging markets (see full list below).

Michael Liebreich, chairman of FiRe and of the advisory board of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “The idea of FiRe arose as a response to the UN Secretary General’s challenge at last year’s Summit: for the private sector to step up to the mark and do more to fund clean energy. It’s been amazing to see FiRe coming together. We started with 35 ideas; then there were 26 candidates; then 12 finalists; and now six fantastic winners. These are really powerful ideas for generating new investment opportunities in clean energy.”

Several hundred leaders from the energy industry, finance and government joined working group sessions at the Summit on Wednesday to help the “champions” behind the six interventions develop them further.

On the next steps for FiRe, Liebreich said: “We all looking forward to working with the champions to get these ideas implemented, whatever it takes, and to measuring the impact. This week was a good one for clean energy finance. And we are already thinking about FiRe 2015.”

For more details on the interventions, or on how to get involved, please email Janis Hoberg at jhoberg@bloomberg.net.