Future energy leaders drive the transition

Why this conversation, why now?

The energy transition is accelerating — but the capital driving it isn’t always flowing where it’s needed most. Investment is still largely clustered around established technologies in mature markets, while the communities, technologies, and ideas that could drive a more just, resilient transition often remain underfunded.

This edition of the World Energy Café — a World Energy Council Future Energy Leaders series exploring challenges in the global energy transition — invited a diverse group of speakers to discuss how finance can support an inclusive energy future:

• Justice Ohene-Akoto, Founder – Africa Sustainable Energy Centre, Board Member – World Energy Council Future Energy Leaders
• Karikari Kwagyan Achireko, Graduate Researcher - MIT CEEPR, Director of Corporate Strategy and Strategic Partnerships - Africa Sustainable Energy Centre
• Fernando Zuniga, Managing Director at MPC Capital
• Eduarda Zoghbi, Founder at MPower Brasil
• Filip Koprcina, Founder & CEO at Energy Shift
• Rimshah Javed, Principal Originator at Danske Commodities
• Alëna Fargere, Independent Director at Lhyfe

The conversation was global in scope and generational in tone, with contributions spanning infrastructure, hydrogen, nuclear, power markets, decentralised finance, and youth-led innovation.

The session offered inspiration and insights ahead of World Energy Week 2025 in Panama, where global leaders will take on the theme:

“Unlocking finance: Energy that delivers return – to people and planet.”

Rethinking finance for a disrupted world

Insights from the Council’s Scenarios 2024 suggest that energy transitions are unfolding in a world shaped by disruptions, not just transitions — climate volatility, political instability, inflation, and conflict are now persistent features, not temporary exceptions. The Café applied the Council’s “constellation of disruptions” framework to explore how finance can adapt to this context.

Unlocking finance isn’t just about increasing capital volumes. It requires designing financial systems for flexibility, resilience, and trust. Investment approaches that rely on certainty and linear planning may struggle to succeed in this new normal.

The conversation surfaced the need for a shift in mindset — one that views uncertainty as a design condition, not a reason for delay.

Infrastructure as an enabler of equity

The central role of infrastructure, particularly grid and transmission systems, emerged as a critical dimension of inclusive finance. The clean energy transition depends on more than just generation — it relies on the ability to move power reliably, efficiently, and equitably.

Across diverse geographies, it becomes evident that modernising grids, reducing curtailment, and enabling cross-border flows can unlock far more than megawatts — they can catalyse access, resilience, and economic development.

As one speaker put it,

“grids are the strength of a country — integral to security, access, and resilience.”

Examples reinforced this point:

1. In Brazil, new and revamped transmission is urgent to unlock renewables.

2. In West Africa, the West African Power Pool demonstrates how cross-border grids can catalyse flexibility, resilience, and shared prosperity.

3. Even where infrastructure exists, curtailment challenges highlight the need for better regulation and business model reform.

Grids are not just engineering assets; they are social and political infrastructures. Investing in them is as much about inclusion and opportunity as it is about electrons.

Facing risk through a systems lens

Many of the ideas explored in the Café align with the need to redefine how risk is understood and managed — a recurring theme across the Council’s strategic frameworks. 

Risk Perceptions often lag reality. In some markets, battery storage is penalised rather than incentivised. Negative pricing from abundant solar supply challenges the economics of renewables. Early-stage technologies like hydrogen and nuclear face long timelines and demand uncertainty that deter private capital.

Participants highlighted the need for:

1. Stable, modernised grids and faster permitting — where lessons from China’s rapid nuclear development illustrate the role of streamlined regulation.

2. New risk-sharing frameworks adapted to emerging markets.

3. Modernised business models and collaborative regulation to match diverse geographies.

What becomes clear is that today’s risk models were built for yesterday’s energy system. Unlocking inclusive finance requires blended tools, regulatory innovation, and long-term vision, not just lower cost of capital.

Decentralisation and democratic finance

Decentralised models — from co-owned solar farms to peer-to-peer finance platforms — offer a glimpse into what democratized energy finance could look like. These approaches suggest new ways to reclaim agency from traditional capital gatekeepers, while embedding social value and community resilience into investment decisions.

But decentralisation is not just technical — it demands institutional trust, digital access, and policy frameworks that recognise distributed value. The discussion also reflected how youth, women, and local actors can become financial protagonists — not just stakeholders — when given the tools to lead.

Financing the hard-to-bank technologies

Hydrogen, nuclear, and biogas remain crucial to decarbonisation pathways, yet they present a conundrum for traditional finance. These technologies are capital-intensive, politically sensitive, and infrastructurally demanding — not an easy fit for short-term risk-return profiles.

Participants highlighted:

1. Hydrogen’s versatility for storage, green steel, mobility (trains, trucks, forklifts), and heavy industry.

2. Africa’s opportunity to produce hydrogen competitively from low-cost solar, with ammonia as a transport vector.

3. The offtake challenge — without firm demand commitments, supply investments remain too risky.

Yet with strategic offtake mechanisms, long-term regulatory visibility, and strong public-private coordination, these technologies can anchor more diverse, secure, and adaptable energy systems. Rather than being seen as high-risk, it may be more useful to frame them as high-leverage — technologies that, if unlocked, could multiply impact across sectors and geographies.

Concessional capital that builds, not just buys

Concessional finance was discussed as a key tool — not just for risk reduction, but for system building. When structured for long-term transformation, concessional capital can enable:

1. Institutional development

2. Local ownership models

3. First-mover technologies

4. Cross-sector programmatic investment

Frameworks like the Clean Investment Fund were referenced as an example of programmatic financing that goes beyond projects to unlock private capital at pace and scale. The takeaway wasn’t that concessional finance should do everything — but rather that it must be targeted, catalytic, and paired with the right enabling conditions.

From projects to people: Investing in execution capacity

Energy transitions don’t just require capital — they require people and institutions able to deploy it well. Much of the conversation gravitated toward the “missing middle” between capital availability and implementation: unclear regulation, execution delays, poor business models, and lack of skilled local capacity.

Supporting training, youth leadership, and public-sector capabilities isn’t peripheral to the finance conversation — it is the finance conversation. Without this focus, capital will continue to pool where it’s safe, not where it’s needed.

Emerging institutions like the African Energy Bank could play a growing role in bridging this gap — not just by pooling capital, but by aligning it with regional priorities and capabilities.

One bold step before World Energy Week

The Café closed with reflections on what it might take to truly unlock finance for inclusion. Rather than offering a single answer, the conversation surfaced a constellation of possibilities:

1. International pooling of capital and resources for shared infrastructure

2. Blended finance to support storage, hydrogen, and first-mover technologies

3. Risk-sharing frameworks adapted to emerging markets for capital intensive assets

4. Zero tax on renewable equipment to improve ROI and affordability

5. Institutional commitments to fund youth-, women- and community-led solutions

6. Metrics that value resilience, access, and systems impact — not just financial margin

These are not prescriptions, but provocations — reminders that change often begins with new questions, not new rules.

From talk to transformation

This World Energy Café demonstrated that unlocking finance isn’t about creating one new instrument or fund. It’s about cultivating a culture of capital that sees people, systems, and futures as worth investing in.

The ideas explored won’t all be solved by October in Panama. But they offer a preview of what’s coming next: a shift from transactional funding to transformational finance. From short-term certainty to long-term resilience. From financing energy — to financing agency.

The question is no longer whether we can afford to include everyone in the transition. It’s whether we can afford not to. As these conversations continue on the Road to World Energy Week Panama 2025, the Future Energy Leaders will carry them forward into global dialogues — informing policy rooms, investment frameworks, and collaborative projects. The Café’s provocations now become pathways: shaping the agenda in Panama and seeding momentum for finance that delivers not only returns, but resilience, equity, and inclusion.