On off grid and opportunity for. S. Companies. How is power africa leverage dging its resources to protect african workers to have cent work conditions and safety on the job . At this point were not looking at taking equity in the prompts themselves but im not going to rule that out in the future if the right opportunity present themselves especially for the smaller off grid and mike grid activities. But were learning some of the risk is the up Front Development financing. Were trying to listen to the private sector and find out what are the constraints. Were using the existing tools in our tool box and developing new tools. I cant tell you what tools we may have a year from now and consult with congress if we can make the case and their support for it to see if Congress Gives us the authority to do that. In terms of protecting african workers were doing Due Diligence on every partner we work with or developing Due Diligence protocols. These are still in development. Were still sorting out who makes the decisions. Right now each agency is continuing to follow its existing protocols that it has whether its related to how workers are treated or environmental ump indications and its still on ongoing iscussion that were having. Ill take one more round of questions. Id like to know why has the congos potential been regulated because the congo has potential of lighting the entire continue nt. Why take six countries that can barely provide electricity to the entire continue nt and neglect that huge potential from the congo that has capability of lighting entire africa . Why not invest in such a country . Imwondering how you think that power africa will tasket renewal in 2015 . Other questions. How is resilience being incorporated into the Power Africa Initiative . Another question. All of these familiar faces asking questions. I am surprised no francophone countries are included. I am sure you are going to reconsider the list. My question is about the tool box. It is my understanding there is a large amount of subsidies. Is this really necessary . Sellingke the chinese solar panels. There are other ways to support the initiative, im sure. Other questions. Right here. Kind of interesting and amusing that all of a sudden, there is all this private african money that has come out of the woodworks to support this effort. When we try to raise money in africa, they give us ridiculous rates. 20 at the bank. There was a project we were involved in a couple of years ago. In the end, young entrepreneurs we raise the money through private sourcing. There is no private venture money or any of those kind of things. Maybe when you talk to these private african finance years, they might want to put up some money to young money on that young people on the continent as opposed to a Public Relations thing associated with a high profile u. S. Venture. Ok, i will try to address a few of these. People know, the in the dam has the potential for 40 gigawatts of power. It could potentially provide power to 500 million africans. Were not ruling anything out at this point. I am not saying were going to go and Start Building grand inga. Same thing with francophone countries. There was no intent to exclude francophone countries. I was sending emails today to people from senegal, rwanda, asking our own staff to start responding to some basic questions because we as a group, as an agency, have to figure out what are the exact criteria were going to do. As i mentioned, there is a commitment to reforms. Government commitment is the key to success. But if we spread ourselves too thin, were not going to have any success. 7 billion sounds like a lot of money. A lot of that is financing. Real,en 7 billion of hard, appropriated dollars is just a drop in the bucket of the money it requires to have a huge impact on the entire african continent. On the question of why arent the africans investing in africa already, why do they need desk, i can speak to that is based on my past experience working for the Credit Development office of u. S. Aid. There is tons of liquidity all over the continent, but the same reasons your mentioning are often the reasons these deals are not happening, high interest rates. They are not getting the terms they need. There may be a lack of familiarity with the sector. If you are dealing with a person on the other side who has never negotiated an agreement or never manage something before, you are not going to invest your money. That is what the idea behind power africa is. Our tools are not meant to be government subsidies. They are meant to help the market adjust to Market Conditions so that we can create an effect and impact where we do not provide this assistance in the future. Once that no Government Official has negotiated a purchasing agreement, they will not need a u. S. Officer to come in and train them how to do that. The idea is as other people see what the private sector is doing and as they engage in transactions, they will not need this type of assistance. They can focus on other areas and other countries. One last question. I hope it is a good one. I have to go get my son. Hershey, a consultant. To what extent are you using bob hershey, a consultant. To what extent are you using the internet to coordinate donors . Were using better than the internet. Were picking up the phone and calling them. The bank is investing heavily. Anything we can do to be working with them, that is how we are managing this. Thank you come everyone, and again, please promise me if im back here a year from now you will show up again and still be interested in this initiative. [applause] you, again, andrew. Really terrific and talk full of information. Why do we bring our panel of here and we will get started . Why dont we bring our panel up here and we will get started . [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] great. You to the thank panel for waiting. I think that gave us a lot of great information, this transactional approach rather than trying to build the perfect regulatory structure and waiting for people to come. I wonder if there are some drawbacks to that as we talk through this. We are going to turn to our panel today, which is a mix of private sector advocacy and independent analysis. From them, how important is this initiative in terms of what they do. What might be some of the missing elements we can build out . What is it we need to be looking for in terms of success, and how is this going to help them with what they are trying to do . To my left, i am not going to go through extensive biographies because you have them. We have ambassador robert parry, a Vice President of programs at the Corporate Council on africa. The Corporate Council hosted a major discussion in tanzanian that hosted the president , business leaders. Obviously, ambassador perry has a good perspective from the broader privatesector community beyond some of those who are already engaged. Their mission is to reach out to pull new players into that. Novo,o have chris kampen who is director of business camponovot chris who is director of Business Development at the sandy in power plant. They have had a relationship governmenth the u. S. In various wells. Chris will say a little bit about how those partnerships have been working and where there may be opportunities for expansion on this initiative. , directorve ben leo of Global Policy at the one campaign. One has been playing a very Important Role in raising the issue of Energy Access and the tremendous development burden that it places on africa. Ben has also been working with the u. S. Congress, i believe, on the electrify africa act. He can say a little bit too about how this initiative and the electrify africa at mesh together and what might be missing, and what are the critical next up steps for the congress and for all of us here to make that happen. Finally, we have sarah dislaw, who has done a lot of great work on Climate Change. Someone mentioned the carbon cap over here. What are some of the dynamics within that, the tradeoffs and constraints in terms of Climate Change and the Power Africa Initiative . Each of our speakers will talk probably 10 minutes or so max, or even shorter. And we want to leave ample time for comments and conversation with the audience. Ambassador perry, im going to turn to you first. Thank you again for joining us today. Thank you very much, jennifer. It is a pleasure to be here joining you this afternoon at the launch of this important event. Transformative. We all know about the projected population growth in africa. In terms of production, that is one key element that africans will have to their advantage over the next two or three decades. What has been missing in terms of competitiveness is adequately priced and available electric power. This initiative is a step in changing that. I think there are projections that chinas population will level off over the next three decades while africas increases. What i see in the future is africa with both the population and electrical power to be a competitive producer for global supplies. This initiative brings together both private sector interest in the market and u. S. Government support in terms of Risk Mitigation for that investment. Make no mistake, investment in africa is risky. Companies are in business to make money and they do it by a assessing risk and offsetting risk. The role of usg is to help them manage that process. There have been a number of agencies working in this area, some individually over the past decade. And others. Aid this coordination that we have now will be, i think, a gain changer. Reaching out to focus on the policy commitment of african governments is the essential. If you ask yourself, why didnt this happen 10 years ago, i think that is the answer. The policy commitment was not there. If it does not come within the next twothree years country to country, companies will not put their money in, certainly not the second time. They might make a first investment, but they will not follow up with more. To get where we want to be in 20 years, we are looking for companies to go in with initial deals that work to everyones benefit, and then they go a second time, a third time, and three more join them, just like has happened in china over the last 30 years in terms of u. S. Corporate engagement. I think the same thing can happen in africa. Essentially, you have a much freer market in many of the countries and i think that dynamic will change and expand over the coming years also. Initiativebout this is that it has the capacity and i think you see that from some of the players of incorporating multiple sources of fuel. Many countries now depend on very expensive diesel fuel. Hat will Transition Companies discovering natural gas will draw upon that, i would expect, but there are also sources of Renewable Power. I want to share some information from the International Energy agency. It surprised me when i read it, but that is why i want to read it. Expands innergy absolute terms, it is expected to surpass natural gas and double nuclearpowered by 2016, becoming the second most important global electricity source after kohl. Generationenewable is expected to rise to 25 of 2018,Power Generation in up from 20 in 2011 and 19 in 2006. Driven by fastgrowing generation from wind and solar, their share of non hydro Renewable Power is seen doubling to 8 by 2014, up from 4 in 2011 and just 2 in 2006. There is tremendous potential there. I mention that on the renewable side because most of the deals, i think we see in this early stage, are focused on a thermal power. But it is not limited to that. I think certainly when youre dealing with Large Population centers, the cities of 1 million and more, probably thermal Power Solutions are the most economical. Yeah population spread around in smaller towns and villages but you have population is spread around in smaller towns and villages with offered solutions. Renewals are probably the best power so give people that they can work as long as they want and not be limited to information or actual work in terms of the site. This has the possibility of opening up a lot. I expect that Many American companies will jump in. Many, like my colleague here, are already there. They started in tanzania with an contact for mcc transition lines, and from there they invested in a Power Generation plant. You will see more of that. On monday, i had a call from two nigerian companies. There is a tender in nigeria for privatisation of plants in the delta. They were looking for american farmers. Them in contact and some of them will follow up on that. I expect an explosion of interest. Im glad to see that usg is stepping in to help companies mitigate that risk. Thank you. Bob, we you so much, will come back to you in q a. Chris, lets hear from you. Thank you. Thank you for hosting this event. Obviously, it is timely. We are extremely healthy to not just be here, but to be a central part of at the very least the president rolling out this initiative. Just to give you a little background on our company, i think it is helpful just to put it in context. We started out as an engineering and Construction Firm in iraq in 2005 where we were employing army corps of engineers contracts and putting in transition lines. From there, we went to afghanistan and worked on a 100 megawatt yousuf fired plant in kabul. Fired plant in kabul. Put out forl was tanzania, we said this is great. Lets go somewhere were not getting shot out. As it happened, the management of our company had been working in tanzania since the early 1980s. So, it was a perfect opportunity. We had relationships that went back 2030 years. We knew the country. We knew the context. And thankfully we were successful in securing two major contracts with an sec, one for the construction of about 1000 , one for the construction of about 1000 lines, and another for the construction of 26 substations, mostly green field, all across tanzanian and zanzibar. We took advantage of that opportunity to purchase a power plant where president obama spoke last week. Another twoloped additional plants in tanzania which were emergency plans operating in dome and arusha. Two hundredt about 17 megawatts capacity in tanzania. In the grand scheme of things, when we talk about needs and capacity, it is very small. But in the tanzanian context, it is very significant, especially when they have suffered bloodshed in the last three years that have left huge parts the country without power. The water in the dams has not been there. Whether its the Climate Change or Freak Weather patterns in the last few years, there has not been enough rain. When the water in the dams goes down, they cannot run the hydros. Suddenly, there is not enough capacity on the grid so you start load shedding. That is why we see over and over again governments paying ridiculous amounts of money on emergency Power Projects and diesel generation sets that are polluting and ridiculously expensive. But they need the power to get the economy moving and to keep people happy. It is an economic issue and a political issue, and it is why it happens. We stepped in to try to fill the gap in capacity. Twoanzania, we also have very interesting biomass projects we are implementing ith our partner to amr and kmr infrastructure. Minigridisolated, a projects. They reflect the ease those of our company which is, as much as we are in ethos of our company, which is, as much as we are in these projects to do business, we are also creating jobs and developing local economies. Through these projects, we expect to employ hundreds of people on bamboo plantations, so the community itself is all part of this process of generating electricity, and we are doing it at about half the price of what they are paying out to power these minichris with diesel. We are also looking at projects grids with mini diesel. We are also looking at projects in malawi and nigeria. We are in nigeria big time. We are looking at the second round to see if there are assets we are interested in acquiring. We are developing a project in guyana. We are pretty much in every one of the power african countries now, or have plans to be. That is the background behind the company. Make onee i will additional point about how we do business. As i said before, part of the hos and core business Business Plan is to develop as we do business. A tanzania, weve built Training Center where we have now trained of birds i forget the numbers, but it is easily hundred400 tanzanian is to build power lines to an international standard. We did it in idaho at a college and we did it out of our own money. That was not part of the tender. We just decided that is the way we ought to do business. Reemployed most of those people. Overer we build another headline or not, we have left a work force there that this 100 qualified to continue that work into the future whether the people doing it are chinese, german or whatever. We do that because it is the right thing to do, and obviously it helps our core business there. We are respected because we do that, and that helps us on a number of fronts. But we are giving something back, i think in a significant way. On the powers africa initiative. Obviously, we are thrilled by this. An epc contractor, we are also an ipp, but we are also a developer. The most important part of this is to get a coordinated approach to all of the elements of making a deal and doing a transaction. We have been involved with usaid and others as this has developed. And we have seen it work. We have a deal i was talking about the biomass projects. Which were financing through opec and some other provide