Region Overview
Latin America and the Caribbean continued to experience market constraints for project development, rising renewable energy prices and election cycles in markets including Colombia and Costa Rica at the beginning of 2022.
Towards the end of the year, the region experienced an increase in demand for support and funding from SMEs and projects under USD 10 million. In the last quarter of 2022, despite a decrease in activity in Mexico, activity stepped up in Guatemala and Colombia. Similarly, in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean, donor interventions aim to have a positive impact on the private sector.
Regional activities at the start of 2022 followed a surge of activities during Q4 2021 and significantly increased in comparison to the first quarter of 2021. As the region is on its way to reaching similar energy consumption to pre-Covid-19 levels, PFAN has seen a significant increase in the number of developers accessing the portal, membership to PFAN LAC investors round table doubled, inquiries from developers and invitations for PFAN to participate in regional events increased, and PFAN roadshows were successfully restarted in Q3 2022.
The focus in Latin America and the Caribbean was to increase PFAN’s visibility vis-à-vis investors and project developers, in particular engaging with the tourism sector in the Caribbean, the circular economy and climate change. Special attention was given to the impact of climate change on water availability in river basins that have reduced hydropower generation and revisiting associated ESG issues with local and indigenous communities.
In 2022, two PFAN-supported projects in the region raised a total investment of close to USD 3.4 million – La Pluma Solar Park in Mexico and Panasolar in Panama, both in the solar sector. Four projects were inducted into the PFAN pipeline in Guatemala (3) and Argentina (1) in the areas of hydro, solar and distributed and off-grid generation.
Events and new Advisors in the PFAN Network
The 5th PFAN Investors’ Round Table took place on 8 March, where participants discussed the economic growth of the region as well as how the market perspectives will affect the PFAN regional network. From 16 – 18 March, our Regional Coordinator Federico Fische took part in the Latin America Energy Forum in Washington DC to represent and promote PFAN. The event brought together the renewable energy finance community to highlight the most exciting opportunities and project pipelines in Latin America.
The year’s first in-person event in the region took place in St Lucia at the 2nd NDC Investment Forum 5 – 7 July. The forum been postponed since 2019, and PFAN was one of the partners that brought it to fruition in 2022. Here, PFAN hosted a panel on ‘’Accelerating decarbonatization to achieve climate targets: The role of the private sector’’ and announced our initiative to support the tourism sector in the Caribbean.
PFAN participated in the Latin American panel at the Wall Street edition of the Renewable Energy Financial Forum and had its 6th PFAN Investor’s Round Table as a side event, which included presentations from USTDA, USAID and the Corporacion Andina de Fomento (CAF).
From 6 – 12 November, we held a PFAN side event at the Caribbean Investment Forum in Trinidad and Tobago as well as several meetings with project developers throughout the week. Our side event featured three panels to address topics related to circular economy, project finance and sectorial challenges and opportunities in the Caribbean.
We made several valuable additions the PFAN LAC advisor network, with 8 new clean energy and financing experts joining the team. All of our Latin America advisors are fluent in Spanish and English, and to better service the French-speaking Caribbean nations including Haiti, we recruited a new advisor to provide our services to the region in French.
