Excellence in Renewable Energy Markets

Winner: Camco International

Camco, a public trading company, is a global developer of emission reductions and clean energy projects. Camco operates in the US, the UK, China, Africa, Russia and South East Asia. The company has been developing projects for over 20 years and has proven to be the market leader in the areas of project development, technical delivery and policy development, working with local industry, multinational companies, governments and regulatory bodies.

Camco’s business model is diverse and includes creative joint ventures with local partners in the regions they operate in. The company is known for having the best commercialisation skills of carbon credits, for which it has received multiple awards. Each transaction was a market leader at the time and was followed by others.

In 2009, Camco completed a highly complex carbon transaction resulting in a total up front payment from Standard Bank to Camco – one of the most complex transactions in the carbon market to date involving a number of sub-structures executed in multiple parts.

For the past three years, Camco has worked with a number of governments in sub-Saharan Africa on developing renewable energy feed-in tariffs, including South Africa, Uganda and Botswana. This has included the development of network avoided cost and levelised cost tariff models and a renewable energy scenario tool. These have enabled policy makers to assess the potential cost impacts of various kinds of renewable energy and establish a viable programme that will attract investors while restricting negative economic impacts such as electricity price increases.

Camco has also assisted regulators and governments in the development of institutional guidelines and regulatory frameworks to support the implementation of feed-in tariffs and is now investigating how international climate change funds can be used to expand feed-in tariffs in sub-Saharan Africa in particular for higher cost technologies such as solar PV and CSP. Camco is also looking at the role of feed-in tariffs for off-grid rural energy programmes.

For its pioneering work in the field of renewable energy, this years Award for Excellence in Renewable Energy Markets is awarded to Camco International.

The Award for Excellence in Renewable Energy Markets 2010 was presented to Steven Heape, Principal Consultant, Camco Advisory Services by Gyles Brandreth, celebrated British author, broadcaster, actor and former Conservative Member of Parliament.