IKEA, Rockefeller Foundation plan to set up $1bn global platform

The IKEA Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation on Monday announced that they will join forces to set up a $1 billion global platform to fight climate change and energy poverty.

The platform, launching this year, aims to empower one billion people with distributed renewable energy (DRE). This is renewable energy generated from sources such as mini-grid and off-grid solutions, located near the point of use, rather than centralized sources like power plants.

The new global platform will oversee the organisations' combined matching funds. It aims to deliver clean and reliable power to the 800 million people worldwide who lack electricity, and a further 2.8 billion who have unreliable access.

It will be run as a public charity to manage a concerted effort to rapidly channel development funds to life-changing projects on the ground. While funding to support energy transition has increased at a global level, many organisations struggle to identify viable, investment-ready projects. As a result, many emerging economies still depend on unreliable and polluting energy sources. By creating a platform to deploy catalytic capital more efficiently, and at scale that supports the expansion of local renewable energy projects, governments will be better able to achieve renewable electrification and development targets.

"If global energy consumption doesn't change from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we will not meet the Paris Agreement ambitions and millions of families will be left behind in poverty. We need to be honest and recognize that the current approach is not delivering the impact the world needs in the time that we have," said Per Heggenes, CEO of the IKEA Foundation.

"Our collective ambition is to create a platform that supports renewable energy programmes which can deliver greenhouse gas reductions fast and efficiently and accelerate the energy transition. We need to replace polluting sources of energy with renewable ones, provide access to energy to communities and unlock further funding for sustainable models. Ultimately, we aim to unite countries and communities in urgent action to tackle the climate crisis and, by doing so, we hope to positively impact the lives of 1 billion people."