About SEFI

New policy and economic frameworks as well as innovative financial engineering are needed to enable sustainable energy to increasingly meet the formidable global energy challenge. Changing attitudes and helping mainstream financiers to consider sustainable energy investments are key components of the energy work within UNEP and BASE and the starting point for the UNEP Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative (SEFI).

With support from the United Nations Foundation, SEFI provides current and targeted information to financiers, while facilitating new economic tools that combine social and environmental factors - both risks and returns - as integral measures of economic performance.

Modelled in part on the UNEP Finance Initiative, SEFI's strategy is to use this platform and modest amounts of capital to convene financiers, engage them to do jointly what they may have been reluctant to do individually, and to catalyse public-private alliances that together share the costs and lower the barriers to sustainable energy investment.