CIPA Holdings Group is targeting up to GH¢1 billion in long-term local financing through a cedi-denominated green bond programme to expand access to solar and battery energy storage for businesses in Ghana.
The initiative, being developed under CIPA’s GreenStar platform, is aimed at addressing a major financing challenge facing commercial and industrial (C&I) renewable energy projects, where available bank loans are often too short-term to support investments in solar infrastructure.
Mr Bright Yamoah, Chief Financial Officer of CIPA Holdings Group, said the company was developing the programme to pool several C&I solar and battery storage projects into a single investable portfolio that could attract institutional investors and other sources of long-term capital.
He said the first phase would be anchored by at least 20 megawatts of aggregated renewable energy assets, with the platform also serving as a financing gateway for other qualified C&I solar and battery energy storage developers and service providers.
The initiative was announced at the third edition of the Energy Sustainability Leadership Conference (ESLC) in Accra, organised by Safety Communication Consult in partnership with the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition.
The conference was held on the theme: “Public-Private Synergy: The Role of Corporate Ghana in National Energy Transformation.”
Mr Yamoah said CIPA was already financing C&I solar and battery energy storage projects through local-currency “Solar as a Service” arrangements, allowing clients to adopt renewable energy without making significant upfront capital investments.
However, he identified short lending tenors, limited understanding of the asset class among lenders, the absence of a standardised project pipeline and relatively small project sizes as key obstacles to scaling up financing for the sector.
He said CIPA’s strategy was therefore to aggregate individual projects into larger investment portfolios, supported by independent governance, catalytic first-loss capital and standardised underwriting.
The approach, he said, could make smaller renewable energy projects more attractive to institutional investors and create a more efficient channel for mobilising domestic capital.
Capital market solution
Mr Kwaku Osei-Sarpong, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CIPA Holdings Group, said Ghana needed innovative local-currency financing instruments to provide the longer-term funding required for renewable energy investments.
He noted that although Ghanaian banks had extended lending tenors to about seven years, solar projects typically required financing periods of between 10 and 15 years.
According to him, financing solar assets with shorter-term loans could place additional cost pressures on projects and ultimately affect tariffs.
He also pointed to pension funds as an important source of long-term domestic capital that could support investments in Ghana’s energy transition.
Mr Osei-Sarpong described the disconnect between institutional capital and bankable energy projects as the “missing middle” in Ghana’s climate finance landscape.
He said strengthening corporate governance would also be essential to attracting investment, as lenders and investors increasingly demanded credible oversight, accountability and effective management of capital.
Mr Yamoah said CIPA was engaging capital market advisers and would follow the applicable approval process of the Securities and Exchange Commission before launching the green bond programme.
He said the final size and timing would depend on investor appetite and prevailing market conditions.
Once operational, the programme is expected to provide additional financing options for factories, manufacturers, shopping centres and other commercial and industrial users through arrangements such as lease-to-own and Solar as a Service.
The initiative is intended to enable more businesses to transition to renewable energy without having to mobilise large amounts of capital upfront, while helping to deepen the pool of domestic financing available for Ghana’s energy transformation.
