23 June 2025, London: The UK Special Representative for Climate, Rachel Kyte will today highlight the economic, health, and environmental benefits of UK-African innovation collaborations at the flagship ZE-Gen event, held as part of London Climate Action Week.
ZE-Gen: Powering Productivity, Accelerating Investment, demonstrates the huge international opportunities presented by clean power and how it can transform emerging economies, businesses, communities and critical services struggling with unreliable or lack of grid access.
The event includes ground-breaking clean energy projects brought to life by ZE-Gen across Ivory Coast, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and the UK. ZE-Gen’s collaborations include supporting more than 50 different organisations. all driving the transition to renewable energy in countries currently dependent on polluting fossil fuel generators.
To date, ZE-Gen has catalysed £39.75m as part of its mission to create jobs, power businesses, and tackle climate change by ending the use of fossil fuel generators, with support from the IKEA Foundation and the UK Government’s Ayrton Fund. Investors, policymakers and innovators will explore key demand sectors – including SMEs, healthcare, telecommunications and humanitarian settings.
Globally, around 1.5 billion people don’t have access to reliable electricity. Highly polluting, fossil fuel generators are used to provide electricity in emerging economies with weak grids or no access to energy, and have huge financial, social and environmental costs.1 Associated health risks include premature death, lung cancer, hearing impairment and numerous other problems.
ZE-Gen is a collaborative initiative by the Carbon Trust and Innovate UK with ZE-Gen projects receiving a range of expert support to bring projects to scale.
With support from the IKEA Foundation and the UK Government’s Ayrton Fund, ZE-Gen has brought to life more than 35 localised renewable energy projects across Cote d’Ivoire, Fiji, Malawi, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, and Uganda.
Despite being home to two-thirds of the world’s population, emerging economies account for only 15% of global clean energy investment, with homes and businesses facing frequent blackouts that can last for weeks at a time, negatively impacting daily lives and business income.
Alongside Rachel Kyte, other speakers include:
- MoPo
- Tony Blair Institute
- Mirova asset management
- Vodafone
- World Health Organisation
- The Carbon Trust
- SEforALL
- IIED
- KOC Bridges for Peace
Notes to editors
For more information please contact: ze-gen@carbontrust.com
Background information: ZE-Gen
Launched at COP27, ZE-Gen is the leading international initiative working to improve the lives of people across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Indo-Pacific region by driving the use of renewable energy in place of polluting fossil fuel generators.
ZE-Gen is a collaborative initiative by the Carbon Trust and Innovate UK and has an ambition to mobilise £100m of funding to inspire action and implement real-world change, delivered in partnership with sector specialists.
The Carbon Trust leads on ZE-Gen’s policy, research, outreach and strategy, with input and oversight across the whole ZE-Gen initiative. This includes bringing partners together and engaging with the public and private sector to identify new opportunities and providing commercialisation support such as investment readiness, market engagement, strategy & sales and product/service development.
Innovate UK is responsible for delivering grant funding to advance renewable technology through the ZE-Gen Innovation Fund.
About the Ayrton Fund
The UK Government announced the Ayrton Fund commitment of up to £1bn for clean energy innovation at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019. It is part of the total £11.6bn of UK International Climate Finance also announced over the period from 2021 to 2026. The vision of the Ayrton Fund is to help drive forward the clean energy transition in developing countries, by creating and demonstrating new technologies and business models to deploy them. It will demonstrate UK leadership and expertise in cutting global emissions through world-leading innovations. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) jointly manage the Ayrton Fund.
Rachel Kyte biography
Rachel Kyte was appointed UK Special Representative for Climate on 21 October 2024.
- She is Professor of Practice in Climate Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and dean emerita of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
- Rachel was previously Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and CEO of Sustainable Energy for All.
- She has also served as World Bank Group Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change, as well as Vice President for Sustainable Development at the World Bank, and for Business Advisory Services at the International Finance Corporation.