Per the last blog post, I briefly introduced the organization and projects I’ve been working with this summer – I was at IFC Climate Business department working on market study and investment analysis of commercial, industrial (C&I) and residential solar markets. Specifically, I focused my time in two capstone projects: C&I solar market mapping and a solar home proposal for Africa. Having just wrapped up my projects, I am excited to share my experience more in details.
For almost a decade, C&I solar has always been a space that not one business model that can be successfully replicated to scale up investment. My main goal is to draw up the total market size and identify where the investment potential for IFC is in the space. I started by grouping global C&I electricity consumption and dissecting it into subsectors. Studies the energy-intense industry’s financials to see how electricity expense affect the top and bottom lines of the industry. Then I cross-examined the sub-sectors, countries, and the existing clients pools in Manufacture, Agriculture, and Service (“MAS”) investment team to conduct a deep dive in commercial subsectors investment potentials on five countries taking consideration of the market size, country credit risk, regulatory framework, electricity price, and solar resource. In concluding the study, I interviewed various teams about their investment approaches with the aim to understand better where the opportunities and constraints lie for IFC. The interviews were extremely insightful to allow me in providing my final recommendation on strategic opportunities in this specific space to IFC by how the organization should leverage its established resources and channels.
For the rest of my time at IFC, with another intern from the department, I also developed a solar home and education in Africa fund strategy with the goal to present to a private donor. Despite the small team, we were able to pull resource from different practice areas. I have learned tremendously from developing and writing the proposal. Particularly, I was able to learn and apply IFC’s knowledge and expertise in the education sector private investment.
During my study and research, I was able to build on the existing network and knowledge in IFC and World Bank regarding the topic. Besides the nature of the work, I also enjoyed working in the Climate Business department on a personal level. The department does a great job of incorporating the intern class into their daily operation. My favorite was to participate in the bi-weekly department meeting and climate anchor meeting. All these high-level discussion and updates on climate investment help me to comprehend how climate-related investments are conducted within and beyond the organization.
With 184 membership countries and more than a thousand employees in its Washington D.C. headquarter, IFC is truly a diverse and international organization as represented by its workforce. People here are very open to sharing their knowledge and passion for their work. Overall, it’s been a rewarding experience to be part of the development-focused financial institution pushing the frontier of impact investing.
Junyi Wang, NYU Stern MBA Candidate 2020, SIIF Fellow 2019
Sustaining Impact 