By Eamonn Ryan
At Solar & Storage Live Africa 2026, held at the Gallagher Convention Centre, much of the conversation centred on technology – solar panels, batteries and hybrid systems. Yet, as Jose Luis Bobes made clear in his session, the real enabler of the energy transition is not technology alone, but finance. Without viable funding structures, even the most effective energy solutions – including those critical to the cold chain – remain out of reach.
Drawing on more than two decades of experience structuring energy investments across Africa and other emerging markets, Bobes unpacked a persistent challenge in the sector: the financing gap for mid-sized projects. Large-scale developments, often exceeding 20MW, tend to attract institutional capital with relative ease. Their size justifies the cost of complex legal, technical, and financial structuring, and the risks can be mitigated through well-established project finance mechanisms. At the other end of the spectrum, small installations can often be funded directly by businesses or through relatively simple financing arrangements.
It is the projects in between – typically in the 5–20MW range – that present the greatest difficulty. These systems are often too large for balance-sheet financing by individual companies, yet too small to justify the high transaction costs associated with traditional project finance. As a result, many viable energy projects stall, not because they lack technical merit, but because they do not fit neatly into existing financial models.
For the HVAC&R sector, this ‘missing middle’ is particularly significant. Many commercial buildings, industrial facilities and mixed-use developments fall squarely into this category when considering on-site generation and storage. A large shopping centre, hospital or office park may require energy solutions of precisely this scale to support its cooling loads, yet struggle to secure appropriate financing. This creates a bottleneck that directly affects the adoption of more efficient and resilient HVAC systems.
Bobes outlined several strategies that are beginning to unlock this segment. One of the most effective is aggregation – combining multiple smaller projects into a single portfolio. By doing so, developers can achieve the scale needed to attract financing while spreading risk across multiple assets. From a financier’s perspective, evaluating one aggregated portfolio is far more efficient than assessing dozens of individual projects, provided there is consistency in how those projects are designed and executed.
This emphasis on standardisation emerged as a critical theme. Standard contracts, uniform technical designs and consistent procurement processes all reduce complexity, lower transaction costs and improve bankability. For HVAC&R professionals, this has direct implications. As energy systems become more integrated with building services, the ability to standardise components – whether in system design, controls or equipment selection – can play a decisive role in securing funding.
The importance of proper system design was another point strongly emphasised. Bobes illustrated how smaller projects, particularly in the commercial space, are often poorly specified. In many cases, installers fail to conduct thorough energy assessments, leading to oversized or undersized systems with poor financial returns. For example, he noted that only a fraction of installers in a typical scenario would adequately assess a client’s actual energy demand before proposing a solution. The result is longer payback periods and reduced confidence from financiers.
This insight is highly relevant to the cold chain. Cooling systems are among the most significant energy consumers in buildings, yet they are frequently designed or retrofitted without a holistic understanding of load profiles or operational patterns. Poorly aligned cold stores and energy system design not only undermines efficiency but also weakens the financial case for investment. Conversely, well-designed systems – with accurate load calculations and optimised integration – can dramatically improve payback periods and make projects far more attractive to funders.
For the cold chain, this signals a shift toward more data-centric design approaches, where cooling systems are planned in tandem with broader energy strategies from the outset. The implications are significant: systems that are accurately sized, intelligently integrated and consistently specified are not only more efficient – they are far more likely to attract funding.
Yet even as these project-level improvements begin to unlock new opportunities, they do not operate in isolation. The ability to scale these solutions across markets ultimately depends on a wider ecosystem of support, from enabling policy frameworks to innovative funding instruments and risk-sharing mechanisms.
As Bobes made clear, bridging the financing gap is not just about better projects – it is about building an environment in which those projects can be replicated, financed and sustained at scale.
This is where the conversation moves next.
continuing in part two…