Powering Agriculture: Financing Distributed Renewable Energy in Emerging Markets

The interrelationship between agriculture and energy is brought into sharp focus by the worsening climate crisis. Nowhere is this more consequential than in emerging markets and developing economies, where agriculture anchors livelihoods and where reliable, affordable energy remains out of reach for hundreds of millions of people.

Distributed renewable energy solutions, from solar irrigation to mini-grids and cold chains, offer a proven path to cutting emissions, raising productivity, and expanding access. These systems reduce emissions while improving energy access, strengthening livelihoods, and supporting local economic development, particularly in underserved and limited-grid areas where extending the central grid is slow or uneconomic.

The key constraint is financing. Emerging markets and developing economies face a considerable investment gap in meeting the mitigation and adaptation goals of the Paris Agreement. Closing this gap will require increasing both the quantity and the effectiveness of international and domestic capital flows, across public and private sources. This question now has a concrete policy anchor in Mission 300, the World Bank Group and African Development Bank partnership to connect 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030. Roughly half of that target is expected to be met through off-grid solutions such as mini-grids and standalone solar, which places distributed renewable energy. Mission 300 sees public finance as the anchor for derisking and affordability, with a targeted 50% of investment from private capital, which is critical for scale and speed.

Climate Week NYC offers a uniquely fitting venue for a conversation focused on financing models for distributed renewable energy in agriculture as a uniquely bankable model in emerging markets. As the largest annual gathering of climate leaders in the Western Hemisphere, held alongside the United Nations General Assembly, it brings finance, policy, research, and implementation actors into the same city at the same time.

This invitation-only roundtable will convene a focused group of leaders across these communities to examine what is working, where the financing bottlenecks are most acute, and what concrete steps can accelerate distributed renewable energy deployment. Ambassador Ali Mohamed, Special Climate Envoy for Kenya, will open the discussion with a keynote that frames the stakes for the continent.

Convened by AGRA,  Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, and the Goldsmith Sustainable Agriculture Fund at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. The event is a Climate-Agriculture Exchange Initiative, co-sponsored by the Carl H. Goldsmith Agriculture Fund and Penn Climate, the University of Pennsylvania’s provostial climate unit.