Subject: financing for energy efficiency and islands
From: Amitabh Desai <[email-masked]>
To: Bruce Lindsey <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 12:49:53 -0400

Christine Eibs Singer, former CEO of E&Co, reached out to discuss her current work and idea on aggregating small projects for consideration by big financiers (see attached). Sounds like it would be useful for us to weave her into our work on the pensions/retrofits (I connected her with Katie) and on aggregating islands' renewables projects for consideration by large commercial contractors/funders (I connected her with Darien).

I continue to believe that on buildings, we now need to move beyond theoretical discussions and identify 20-30 tangible buildings projects, take those to folks who have capacity to bundle them, and then take whatever bundled instrument they create to the pensions for feedback.

On islands, I continue to believe that WJC's comparative advantage and catalytic impact may or may not lie in working closely with individual islands to develop / implement their climate action plans, but certainly lies in being the super-national leader/entity who convenes the islands, financiers, and companies to create a space in which he can elicit from the financiers a notional pledge to allocate a percentage of their portfolio(s) to island infrastructure projects that meet a certain set of predefined criteria, so that the islands then have a target to aim for. There are many other groups who want and can work with islands on their energy plans, but there is really no one out there who is or has capacity to aggregate the islands, and connect them with the financiers that are needed to turn the good intentions into real projects - and WJC has unique ability to help on this. And, without the financing discussed up-front, I am not sure it's worth WJC's time to get involved in advising individual island governments.

Just my two cents as a non-expert. Hope this helps, and just wanted to be sure you're updated, and I'd welcome your feedback. Thanks, Ami