The transition to clean, renewable energy can create a future defined by abundance, rather than scarcity. But to realize that vision, everyone must be able to access affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity.
Energy access is one of the most important determinants of health and economic prosperity, yet 3 billion people live without or with unreliable access to electricity. In 2021, a group of philanthropies, multilateral institutions, and other organizations gathered at the Bellagio Center to define an alliance that would drive investment in and scale renewable energy in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The convening was the culmination of extensive partnership development efforts led by The Rockefeller Foundation and built on more than a decade of Big Bets on expanding access to clean energy.
Just two months later, the partners announced the launch of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet on stage at COP26 in Glasgow. Since then, the Global Energy Alliance has unlocked billions of dollars in capital, helped bring renewable power to tens of millions of people, created or improved over 3 million jobs, and prevented nearly 300 million tons of carbon emissions.
We spoke to The Rockefeller Foundation Chief Operating Officer Ashvin Dayal, who oversaw the development of the Global Energy Alliance in his previous role as Senior Vice President, Power. He talked about what it took to create the Alliance and the lessons learned over its first five years.
We changed the question from ‘how can we fund energy projects,’ to ‘how can we de-risk and organize the energy transition in low- and middle-income countries?’
Ashvin DayalChief Operating Officer, The Rockefeller Foundation
What drew you to focus on renewable energy?
Much of my early work was in Asia, dealing with economic development, post-disaster reconstruction, and climate adaptation. I saw that, without a reliable power system, there’s a limit to what you can achieve. Not having power is an underlying constraint to almost every other challenge. But now, for the first time in human history, solar power is the cheapest, cleanest, and easiest-to-deploy way to generate electricity. This isn’t just interesting technology. It could fundamentally transform the lives of billions of people.
When I came to The Rockefeller Foundation in 2008, we had just started a solar mini grid project in India, and it caught my attention. In places where these systems brought reliable power, local shops, cold storage, mills, and all these other hubs of economic activity were springing up. So we scaled the model and created Smart Power India, the Foundation’s first institutional investment in clean energy as a deliberate strategy.
How did the work on Smart Power India set the stage for the Global Energy Alliance?
Smart Power India showed that distributed renewables could power real economic activity. Rather than treating energy poverty as a problem to be minimally solved, we started thinking about energy abundance as a foundation for prosperity.
In 2019, The Rockefeller Foundation launched the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty, which brought together leaders of energy institutions and funding agencies to agree on what was needed to end energy poverty. Its conclusion was that we needed to take these big ideas and create a platform for delivery at scale, based on a principle of universal access. Doing this at a planetary scale would take tens of billions of dollars, far more than The Rockefeller Foundation could write a check for. So we changed the question from “how can we fund energy projects,” to “how can we de-risk and organize the energy transition in low- and middle-income countries?”
Development banks, climate philanthropies, and energy access organizations were all operating with different priorities, metrics, and timeframes. We needed to step into that messy mix and figure out how to coalesce partners around a common vision. That’s when The Rockefeller Foundation started working with what is now called the Connected Leaders Program — the Bellagio Center convening team — to curate a consequential gathering.
In the runup, we spent a lot of time building relationships, establishing trust, and helping people see that their agendas weren’t in competition. It helped that we were bold in what we brought to the table. Our investment in what became the Global Energy Alliance was the biggest-ever bet in the Foundation’s history. We issued a bond to raise additional resources, demonstrating that not only were we committed, we were betting the farm on it.
How did the convening and the post-convening work move things forward?
Nobody wanted to just sign another pledge. They wanted to really change things. That’s what sparked the momentum. There was a huge desire to create something that the whole group could stand behind on stage at COP26. People saw it as a unique opportunity to be a part of something.
The Bellagio Center was crucial. It has this incredible sense of history. Convenings there led to the creation of world-changing organizations and helped establish foundational ideas in areas like impact investing and global food systems. And there’s just something about how Bellagio Center convenings are designed. People can’t just pop in and out. You eat together, walk together, discuss together. I always say that the combination of incredible physical beauty and an almost monastic way of interacting generates an unusual sense of mutual accountability. Recognizing the sheer privilege of being in that space, with a chance to make a difference, brings out the best in people. All of that creates moments of clarity that enable people to think big, be brave, and say “yes.”
At their best, convenings show a pathway where, by collaborating, we can all do better together. And by the end of our three days in Bellagio, everyone was fully on board.
There was a lot of work to do afterward. We needed to lock into a shared vision, have concrete numbers, and get people to make tangible commitments, and COP26 was just two months away. Vice President, Communications, Policy & Advocacy Sundaa Bridgett-Jones and I, with the support of the whole Foundation, led the follow-up to design the mechanism and figure out how the money would flow, who the partners would be, and how much capital we could direct toward this infrastructure.
It went down to the wire. In addition to the commitment of the IKEA Foundation, we got the final sign-off from the Bezos Earth Fund to name them in the press release on the day before the launch. When we announced the Global Energy Alliance, it was an incredible thing to show the world: This unlikely coalition was committing in a way that hadn’t been done before, to bring clean, renewable power to a billion people.
What has the Alliance accomplished over the last five years, and what lessons have you learned?
The Global Energy Alliance, alongside its partners, has reached more than 90 million people with new or improved energy access, and it is on track to reach at least 320 million people. The organization has deployed more than half a billion dollars of philanthropic capital across 137 projects in more than 30 countries. And every dollar has resulted in more than $15 in public and private co-financing, so that $500 million philanthropic investment is tied to projects worth $7.8 billion.
There’s also been a ripple effect. By proving this delivery model, the Global Energy Alliance gave other big institutions the confidence to invest using this approach. In 2024, The World Bank and the African Development Bank committed to provide electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2030 through an initiative called Mission 300, which is backed by more than $50 billion in pledged capital. That whole idea of philanthropy as the first risk taker is being played out at scale.
In terms of lessons, we’ve seen that focus beats breadth any day of the week. At times, the Global Energy Alliance tried to do too many things in too many places, but now it’s really honed its strategy through two core strands of work: productive use of energy — which links electrification to activities that spur industry and enterprise, create jobs, and strengthen local economies — and grids of the future — which advances next-gen technologies to deliver clean, reliable energy.
You have to keep raising your sights and evolving your solutions. Sometimes that means working with new partners or stepping back from proven solutions that aren’t going to get us to the next level. It also means embracing new ideas — with AI and digitization, we’re deploying solutions now that didn’t exist when we started. All of this has required a lot of learning and humility, and we still have plenty of work to do to succeed in this bet.
The conversation on renewables is often based on the idea that clean energy comes at a premium. But Ashvin believes that the rapidly falling costs of solar deployment and battery storage have changed that. “The sun is now the cheapest fuel in history, and the countries with the most persistent poverty are those where these technologies have the highest potential,” he said. “The moral case and the business case have come together, and that makes me hopeful.”
Learn More:
- Listen to Ashvin Dayal discuss The Rockefeller Foundation’s Big Bet on the Global Energy Alliance on MCJ’s Inevitable Podcast.
- Watch the Launch of the Global Energy Alliance at COP 26 in Glasgow.
- Read the 2020 report of the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. The Rockefeller Foundation is not responsible for and does not endorse its content.