Government of Nepal
Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation
Alternative Energy Promotion Centre
Central Renewable Energy Fund
Call for Concept Note Applications for Sustainable Energy Challenge Fund
(Published in the Kantipur National Daily Newspaper on Wednesday 3rd May 2023)
Nepal Renewable Energy Programme is a Government of Nepal programme dedicated to increasing private sector investment in distributed renewable energy (DRE) and increasing universal energy access, while facilitating policy, planning, legal construct, and regulatory environment conducive to both enabling and sustaining progress in DRE market development.
Central Renewable Energy Fund (CREF), the financial mechanism of Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC) has established a Viability Gap Funding based Sustainable Energy Challenge Fund (SECF) with funding support from UK-Aid. SECF provides financial and technical assistance to the DRE projects to ascertain their financial viability and ensure sustainable operation of approved projects.
The SECF application procedure is a two-stage process. In the first stage, applications for Concept Note of potential DRE projects are requested. In the second stage, short listed Concept Note applicants will be invited to submit Full Applications, which will undergo due diligence and evaluation by an Independent Evaluation Panel of DRE experts.
Applications are requested from the project developers, local governments and financial institutions for; (1) DRE projects developed in a Public Private Partnership model; (2) Projects to be implemented by aggregating demands of DRE technologies and projects; (3) Projects to improve energy access to the households through reverse auction; (4) Projects proposed for the improvement of technical, financial and managerial aspects of the existing mini and micro hydro projects or other renewable energy mini-grid projects; (5) Captive solar PV installations and other DRE projects at commercial, institutional and industrial buildings for loan interest rate buy-down or incentives based on kWh generation; (6) Innovative DRE projects that meet SECF criteria, (7) Commercial banks interested in participating in the Loan Loss Guarantee Mechanism, and (8) Local governments interested to develop energy access projects through reverse auction modality.
With this notice, AEPC/CREF invites all eligible applicants to submit Concept Notes via online application portal: www.secf.nrepnepal.com. Even though the online application portal is always open for submission of concept notes, only the concept notes received until 30th June 2023 as a response to this call, will be evaluated on a rolling basis. So, we encourage potential applicants to submit their concept notes as soon as possible.
Please visit our website https://www.nrepnepal.com/notices/ for further information. Interested applicants can also contact us directly through secf_queries@NREPNepal.com or call us at 9802323318.
Information Package on SECF including eligibility criteria, application process and Funding Windows, are available through the following websites:
www.moewri.gov.np, www.aepc.gov.np, www.cref.gov.np, www.nrepnepal.com.
AEPC/CREF reserves the right to accept or reject, wholly or partly, any or all the project concepts without assigning any reason, whatsoever.